Transmigration without a System + Mystery + Hard-Core Survival in the Ming Dynasty Bureaucracy
A recommendation to readers of "Taking the Langya Name": if Wang Yang fought for survival by “borrowing a surname” amid the open and hidden attacks of aristocratic clans, then Shen Mo risks his life by “balancing the books” amid the still waters and deep currents of the bureaucracy. Both wield knowledge as their only blade, walking alone into the mists of history.
During the Hongwu era, the Jiangning County yamen was a web covered in cobwebs. Shen Mo, the newly appointed clerk in the Revenue Office, thought he was taking over ordinary tax accounts. He had no idea he was stepping into a hole that had remained unfilled for eight years.
Summer taxes were converted to silver at seventy percent of the official rate. But silver prices on the market were soaring, leaving the common people in misery. Yet the figures in the county yamen’s ledgers were so spotless they looked like freshly washed flagstones. Among the moldy files in the archives, Shen Mo found a blank ledger. It was the final message, written in alum water by his predecessor, the clerk who had jumped into the Qinhuai River.
“Skimming the silver conversion, paying tribute to the Duke of Wei’s household.” Only when the invisible words appeared under the lamplight did Shen Mo understand: he hadn’t merely exposed a set of accounts, he had challenged the heavens. The magistrate’s casual order, “Follow the old rules,” came down on him with crushing weight. But what were the old rules? The official pocketing of conversion fees as paper money lost value? An interest chain linking merchants, the county yamen, and the nobility? Or eight thousand taels of silver, as white as snowflakes, vanishing without a trace on the way to the capital?
Just then, Zheng Shiyuan, the only censor who had dared to submit a memorial during the Blank Paper Case, spoke to Shen Mo in a dilapidated courtyard in the western part of the city. “I’ll take this. But from now on, you’ve never seen me, and I’ve never seen you.”
I just want to know, in the minds of the authors, are these time-travelers or reborn people more afraid of death or less afraid of death?
A rare good book in the tomato history category, worth reading
Realistic and depressing, Zhu Yuanzhang is the most emperor-like in online novels
I have never read a novel like this, and it is too real. There are a few flaws, but the flaws cannot be concealed. There are some details that the author himself wrote and immediately forgot. This is a bad habit and the logic is directly distorted. It is supposed to be a book that wins through details. Many things are very distinctive, such as revealing secrets from the details of the account books. However, there are inconsistencies in the ledgers and the details do not match up.
Good, good, good, good