A knowledge-driven political intrigue novel with no System and no golden finger. The protagonist, Shen Mo, is not a transmigrator and has no modern body of knowledge. His only weapons are the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art and the Sunzi Suanjing, which he studied at the county school, and the instinct he inherited from his father, a low-ranking clerk, to “read account books as if they were flesh and blood.” The story revolves around the three economic lifelines of grain, household registers, and land. It starts with an audit, then traces the threads to gentry hiding farmland, corruption in grain transport, a black hole in the salt tax, and ultimately the chronic land-consolidation problem that has plagued the Great Yong for a hundred years. The story rejects folk-legend tales of incorruptible judges like Bao Gong and instead portrays the real give-and-take of political struggle. Every time Shen Mo brings down an opponent, he pays an equal price, or an even higher one.
