Shen Yan, a poor young scholar bearing the hopes of his entire clan, arrives in the imperial capital. The moment he submits his palace examination paper, he is arrested on the spot.
The charge: His essay on statecraft closely matches questions that were leaked in advance.
The death row cell is bitterly cold. The young man of the Shen family shuts his eyes, struggling to contain his despair, while his remarkable memory replays every detail of the palace examination:
The examiner’s gaze, fixed on him with a chillingly amused expression;
The fresh, flawless paper and ink used by several young men from prominent families, while his own materials are the cheapest rough paper;
The question, seemingly broad and weighty, but in fact concealing key details of a secret court case from three months earlier.
A faint sound comes from a crack in the wall. Half a page of a hastily written essay on current affairs blows in on the cold wind.
Shen Yan’s pupils contract sharply: This is unmistakably the discarded draft he wrote before the examination at a shabby little inn, only to have it mysteriously go missing!
A glimmer of hope appears. In this place of certain death, he cannot afford to let it slip away.
