Born the legitimate son of Wang Anshi, Wang Pang comes with the instincts of a Wall Street auditor. He’s determined to tear off the “rich playboy” label and wield mathematics to defend the New Policies!
At court, he takes up his abacus and uses double-entry bookkeeping to expose corruption, reducing corrupt ministers of the Old Party to tears with a single set of accounts. In Shaanxi Circuit, he uses grain in place of money to revitalize livelihoods and ruthlessly root out parasites, ensuring the Green Sprouts Law truly benefits the people. On the frontier, he improves firearms and lays clever traps, using laxative beans to rout Western Xia and cutting off supplies to trap its cavalry. With an auditor’s logic, he masters the game of military and political maneuvering.
The Old Party frames him, the imperial clan plots rebellion, and foreign enemies close in. The chaotic game of the age tangles around him like a set of books gone awry. Wang Pang turns his abacus into a game board and public opinion into his pieces. While helping his father, Wang Anshi, repair the cracks in the New Policies, he uses modern financial thinking to rebuild the foundations of the Great Song: stabilizing its finances through state monopolies on salt and iron, opening the Silk Road through trade, and purging officialdom with an iron hand.
This legitimate heir’s story is both the answer of Duke Jing’s son to a chaotic age and a whole new chapter in rewriting the fate of the Great Song. Watch as this brilliant strategist, hidden beneath the facade of a playboy, uses mathematics to break the deadlock, make the New Policies flourish, and lead the Great Song to become a mighty military power!
