In the last years of Kangxi, how could a young man from Yaxing, who was not even considered a "low-class", move among imperial merchants, officials, and foreign merchants?
Leng Zixing, a fringe figure in the Jia family, is the most secretive broker of the entire four major families - he is not named Jia, but he knows the treasury codes of the Rongning family better than Baoyu; he does not enter officialdom, but he arranges shady deals for high-ranking officials. From selling antiques to talking about marriage, from selling foreign goods to delivering secret messages, he is the "messenger" at the gate of the Grand View Garden and the "accountant" behind the prosperity of this apocalyptic world.
While Bao Dai was reading poetry under the moonlight, Leng Zixing was calculating which incense burner in the Jia Mansion could be worth three hundred taels of snowflake silver; while the gongs and drums of Yuan Chun's wedding ceremony were noisy, he was already in the ghost market of Panjiayuan, selling the last four authentic works of the Ming Dynasty for a certain Baylor who had lost power.
This is a broker's survival game, and it is also a financial panorama before the decline of a dynasty. Information is power, and intermediaries are battlefields. See how Leng Zixing stirred up the final game of Jinling City from the edge of the word "cold" in Jia Mansion.
