In the third year of Dasheng Chengxi, the new emperor Xiao Jingheng nominally took charge, but in fact he was restrained by the Empress Dowager Song, Xiang Pei's faction, the old military group and the family's inner treasury network. In his later years, the late emperor used troops in the Western Territory, and the imperial court allocated salaries year after year. The accounts of the Ministry of Household Affairs, the receipts signed by the Ministry of War, and the actual receipts from the Western Territory did not match up. After Shen Yan, a doctor in the household department, discovered the wrong accounts, he was convicted of "corruption of military pay". The Shen family was overthrown and the case files were sealed. Many years later, his daughter Shen Zhaowei changed her name and entered the palace, becoming the lowest-ranking maid in the imperial kitchen. The Zichen City where she is located is not a romantic palace, but a power machine that operates according to rules: the imperial dining room manages the entrance, the food bureau manages the system, the palace bureau manages the female officials and account books, the inner treasury manages tributes and rewards, the punishment department manages confessions that cannot be made public, and the chamberlain supervises the royal front and secret lines. Whoever controls the process can decide the life or death of those in lower positions.
