Lu Zhiwei was born in the Lu family’s small courtyard on West Street in Qinghe County. Her parents died young, leaving only her frail elder brother, Lu Zhiyuan, to support the family. After ten years of hard study, Lu Zhiyuan was counting on the county examination to change their family’s fortunes, but the night before the exam, he came down with a high fever and coughed up blood. Since childhood, Lu Zhiwei had copied books for her brother, memorized the classics, and learned the county school’s rules. To protect his exam registration and pay off the family’s debts, she cut her hair, bound her chest, and entered the exam hall in his place with his basket.
She thought that if she could just get through the three exam sessions, she might at least give her brother a chance to survive. But in her assigned cell, she discovered rumors about the exam questions, hidden compartments in exam baskets, secret marks on papers, and suspicious attention being paid to poor candidates. The examination system in Qinghe County was no simple search for talent. It was a battlefield where local gentry, the county school, chief examiners, and clerks all wielded knives against one another. Lu Zhiwei was no born strategist. She relied on careful observation of the rules, remembering what people said, and holding back her fear as she went from facing the charge of impersonation to becoming entangled in the heart of an exam fraud case.
Once her sex is exposed, she has no way back. She can only search for a chance to survive among the county magistrate, the chief examiner’s envoys, and impoverished scholars. She eventually begins as a county yamen aide, then uses her skills in investigating cases, disaster relief, auditing accounts, and judging people to make her way into the heart of the imperial court’s power.
