Blood and Tears Beneath the Palace Walls

In the final years of the Dali Dynasty, transmigrator Ke Yimeng awakens at the foot of a cliff and is swept into the earth-shaking struggle among nine princes for the throne. He was supposed to be a nobody who only wanted to live out his days in peace in a southern town with his wife and daughter. But an imperial summons from the Empress Dowager calls him back to the capital, where undercurrents swirl through the Imperial Medical Bureau, powerful ministers threaten him, and princes vie to win him over. Everyone is forcing him to choose a side. Ke Yimeng chooses neither. He will be no one's weapon or pawn. Using modern thinking and his knack for anticipating people's motives, he carves out a third path through the cracks of power: Overthrow the imperial system, establish a cabinet, and ensure that power is always held accountable. But even deeper secrets soon come to light: the Empress Dowager is also a transmigrator, the strategist of the enemy forces on the frontier is a local driven mad by the System, and the jade pendant in Ke Yimeng's possession holds the way home. As the nine princes fall one after another and the old System collapses for good, Ke Yimeng chooses to disappear among the people. From then on, the lights of the clinic south of the city burn late into the night. He is the unseen guardian of the new order, a pair of eyes that never stop watching power.