The Golden Jade Coffin

In the twenty-fourth year of Zhaowu, the Great Zhou Dynasty was like a coffin inlaid with gold and jade: magnificent on the outside, rotten within.

The day Shen Guiyan entered the capital, rain poured from the sky. The newly appointed jinshi did not seek the favor of the powerful. Instead, carrying half of a broken fish tally, he made his way into a chilly room in the Hanlin Academy, piled high with old papers. Everyone thought he was a poor scholar who did nothing but bury himself in books. Everyone, that is, except Grand Tutor Pei Shu, the old man standing in the emperor's shadow, who caught the icy stench of blood rising from hell.

Shen Guiyan believed in neither the Way nor fate. He believed only in the brush and the blade in his hands. He used mathematics to unravel the ledgers of official corruption and the law to weave a noose, methodically uprooting the Grand Tutor's faction in Jiangnan. At his side stood Li Yunse, the North-Guard Marquis's daughter, as sharp and spirited as a blade, along with the smiling, knife-wielding head eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial Affairs.

This was a war without smoke.

There would be no heavenly reinforcements, only political infighting, economic collapse, and battles of human will.

Shen Guiyan did not intend to patch up this leaking ship. He meant to sink it with his own hands, then become its new keel.

“In this world, the teachings of the sages cannot save the starving, and benevolence and righteousness cannot fill an empty stomach.”

“If the bones of Great Zhou have grown soft, then we'll replace them with a stronger set, even if those bones are mine.”

This is a political epic told with a realist's eye, where the dirtiest deals coexist with the loneliest acts of courage. Watch a lone official from a humble background take one careful step after another through the mire, staking the fate of the realm on an ordinary man's body as he remakes the land.