During the Kangxi era, Lin Dingshan, a poor scholar from Donghu Village in Leizhou, shoulders his family's hopes and studies for ten long years before finally earning the title of Presented Scholar. Yet an anonymous letter exposed at the imperial banquet binds him inextricably to a decades-old salt-tax scandal: the same case that wrongfully led to his father's death.
Seeking the truth, Lin Dingshan petitions the emperor to send him to a dangerous coastal county in Fujian. Powerful local families dominate the area, pirates run rampant, and mysterious silver payments known as “surplus funds” circulate in the shadows of officialdom. On his way to take up his post, he shelters from the rain in a ruined temple and meets an old servant surnamed Chen, who leaves him with the words, “Greed is not measured by how much you take. Taking a single coin is no different from taking ten thousand taels of gold.” Their fates quietly intertwine.
In Fujian, Lin Dingshan meets Chen Moxuan, a righteous man who loathes evil but keeps his head down because of his family's entanglements; Zheng Canghai, heir to a seafaring merchant family who understands maritime trade but is constrained by the authorities; and Guo Wenyuan, an outwardly smooth-talking adviser who still has a conscience. The four form an alliance amid turbulent intrigue, surveying farmland and pursuing stolen funds, only to uncover the secrets behind Donghu Village's old name change, made to evade bandits...
Towards the end of the first volume, the four formed an alliance, but it was not enough to fight against "Master Guo". In the last few chapters of the first volume, the ups and downs of the story are brought to a climax in one go.
Feeling a bit like classical Chinese? Can you speak more plainly, maybe it will be easy to understand.