In the twenty-first year of the Jiajing reign, the court dispatched a newly appointed salt inspector.
The Xu family's disowned son, dismissed as a laughingstock throughout the capital, went alone into the tiger's den of the Two Huai region.
Three months later, the region's biggest illicit salt dealer was arrested, and 140,000 taels of silver were seized.
Six months later, three senior Salt Transport Commission officials were jailed, exposing a silver trail leading all the way to the capital.
No one could figure out how a worthless playboy had pulled it off. Every day, he still drank and caroused, still frequented the pleasure houses, and remained just as hopeless as ever.
Yet the men who fell never understood, even as they died, how they had been brought down.
Some said he had a master backing him. Some said his luck was out of this world. Others claimed he possessed a secret edict left by the previous emperor.
Only one person knew the truth.
What he had in his head was more terrifying than any secret edict: a book that had taken four hundred years to complete, called The History of the Ming.
From a seventh-rank censor to a man whose power overshadowed the realm, it took him ten years to make the climb.
But the first step had already been taken the moment he crossed the capital's gates.
