The Discarded Son

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Song, Qingzhou.

Shen Gui, a junior judicial officer, has spent six years tucked away in a side room, reviewing case files and drinking cold tea. His performance reviews have been average every year. Everyone thinks he is a bookish loser with no future. Then Fang Shao, an accounts clerk at the Ever-Normal Granary, dies, leaving behind a perfectly clean death certificate. The coroner rules it a stroke, and the paperwork is signed and sealed, without a single flaw. The prefect dumps the task of auditing the granary on Shen Gui. He has three days to seal the records and file them away. No questions allowed. Shen Gui asks none. While going through the case files, he simply finds something in a place where it should not exist: a document that should not exist at all. Twenty-one thousand three hundred shi of grain, over eleven years, handled by three people and overseen by one. A petition Fang Shao wrote five days before his death, one that was never sent. Shen Gui realizes two things: first, what he has in his hands is enough to bring down half of Qingzhou; second, he is now a sitting duck. He cannot report it. A ninth-rank junior officer who tries to file a complaint is doomed wherever he goes. He cannot run, either. Fleeing would be tantamount to confessing. His only way out is to make himself valuable, valuable enough that no one would want to kill him. From discarded pawn to player, he has only one chance.