No. 1 Scholar

"The Journey of the Number One Scholar" is a long historical novel set in the Renzong Dynasty of the Northern Song Dynasty. It tells the story of Zhang Yuguang's life from a young boy in Jianzhou to the minister of the Ministry of War. He was a scholar at the age of sixteen, and at the age of twenty-one he won six yuan in a row, reaching the top of the imperial examination. He was considered a genius. During the six years since Shao Wujun was sent abroad, he built embankments to control floods, cleared fields and returned land, and ran schools to grow tea. He was known as "Zhang Qingtian" among the people. After entering the capital, he added books to Taichang Temple, sent envoys to the Liao Kingdom, established the annual budget system, joined people with the stylus, built cities and prepared borders - he made practical achievements in every position. However, it was on this upward path that he fell step by step. From the time he received the first charcoal tribute to the approval of the budget for the dam, he thought he was weaving a web to protect himself and his family, but he did not know that every thread woven into it was a thread in the hands of others. The Yellow River burst and tens of thousands of lives were lost. He was eventually forced to commit suicide and his family was exiled to Lingnan. The eight volumes of the book describe the complete arc of a "capable official" from being honest to being greedy. This is not a simple moral admonishment story, but a profound book about "how good officials turn bad" - every step has a reason, and every step is only an inch of deviation. Looking back twenty years later, those inch by inch are the entire distance from "living up to the king and the people" to the rotten wood and sand on the Shanghuxi dam.