I'm a Concubine's Son, Yet the Imperial Exams Bring Me to Power

Zan Zhixing never imagined he would die such a pathetic death.

At twenty-two, he was at an ordinary university, studying an ordinary major, and his thesis had been rejected even after eight revisions.

At three in the morning, he stood up to stretch, stepped on a charging cable on the floor, and toppled backward, smashing the back of his head against the corner of his desk.

That was the end of him.

When he opened his eyes again, he had become Zan Zhao, the sixth young master of the Marquis of Yongchang’s household in the Great Yong Dynasty.

They called him a young master, but he lived in a dilapidated courtyard where the wind and rain came right through the walls, slept beneath a stiff, threadbare blanket, and couldn’t even get a full meal once a month.

His legal mother treated him like he didn’t exist. His legitimate older brother and sister called him a “bastard,” and his birth father couldn’t care less about him.

The concubine who had given birth to him had died long ago. The only person in the household who still treated him like a human being was the old nanny from Jiangnan who had accompanied his mother. Her surname was Zhao.

The servants gossiped that on the night his mother died, a maidservant of his legal mother’s had carried a bowl of medicine into her room.

By morning, the bleeding wouldn’t stop.

No one sought justice for the six-year-old child.

But Zan Zhixing wasn’t really six years old.

He hadn’t studied the Four Books and Five Classics in his previous life, but he knew how to read.

He knew that in this age, where powerful clans held sway, there was only one way for a son born to a concubine to live like a person:

The imperial examinations.

From the county-level exam to the prefectural exam, and from there to the academy exam.

Child scholar, licentiate, provincial graduate, metropolitan graduate.

He would climb the ladder one step at a time.

He would test his way out of that broken courtyard, into the imperial court, and all the way to the day when no one could hold him down.

He would make the people who deserved to die pay for their crimes, and force those who deserved to kneel to bow down.