Azure Clouds: The Mastermind

Shen Qingyin starts out in a small town, treating the official world as a chessboard and its officials as pieces. She refuses to become someone else's pawn and vows to take command of a game called "The Nation's Fortune."

She turns discarded pieces into pillars of the state, sees through her opponents' hidden moves, and turns risky plays into victories. For thirty years, she advances one careful step at a time, rising from the grassroots to stand firmly at the center of power.

When an old rival asks her in prison how she won, she reveals the heart of her strategy in a single sentence. But the endgame of this thirty-year chess match for the nation's fortune has only just begun?