A prosperous Great Qian, where all is peaceful and the rivers run clear? Nonsense! The impoverished scholar Lu Changfeng has barely set foot in the capital when he is dragged into an imperial exam scandal and nearly beheaded. Fortunately, he has a photographic memory and an eye for detail, able to spot at a glance the rouge stain on an examiner's cuff and the strange ink marks on the exam records.
“My lord, what you drank at Chunfeng House last night wasn't wine with a pretty companion. It was a drink that could cost you your head.” Smiling with genteel composure in the courtroom, Lu Changfeng produces irrefutable evidence and brings down the chief examiner and a high-ranking official, wiping out their entire clans. The court's officials all assume he's just a lucky, clueless upstart, until he places first in all three rounds of the exams while sending the heads of the Six Ministries to the imperial prison one by one.
On the day he tops the imperial exams, the emperor looks at this “cleaver” and asks with a smile, “My dear subject, who do you want to investigate next?” Lu Changfeng turns his smiling gaze toward the throne. “Your Majesty, I think there may be something wrong with the imperial treasury's accounts as well...”
The plot is very good, interlocking, and you can survive in death.