Ten years ago, Shen Jingyan, the maritime governor who advocated opening the seas to trade, was framed by Yan Song and the Grain Transport Gang for colluding with the enemy and betraying his country. All 371 members of the Shen family were executed in Jinling's western market in a single night. The only child, Shen Jinglan, was rescued by a loyal servant, but broke his left leg. He went into hiding under the assumed name Shen Yan, surviving at the very bottom of the Jinling canal docks.
Over the next ten years, under the name Tidewatch Pavilion, he gathered everyone driven to desperation by the sea ban, opened up underground sea routes along the entire southeastern coast, and became the underground maritime trade lord beneath the ban.
In the seventeenth year of Jinghe, the plum rains softened the bluestone paving of Jinling's docks. To curry favor with Yan Song, the Grain Transport Gang hiked its transport surcharges, driving the porters to their deaths. Shen Yan's years of lying low came to an end. Using his limp and his identity as a laborer to conceal himself, he made his moves one step at a time: first cutting off the gang's grain supply routes in Jinling and overthrowing its Jiangnan branch; then using Lu Zhengliu, the canal transport governor, to uncover irrefutable evidence that the gang had embezzled the imperial treasury; tracing the corruption up the chain until he finally brought down Chief Grand Secretary Yan Song, cleared the Shen family's name, and forced the Great Yong dynasty to abolish the sea ban and open the seas to trade, so that at last the million people of the southeast could make their living on the waves.
