This book not only tells the story of a peasant boy's counterattack in the imperial examination, but also a complete story of how a boy from a poor family used the rules in the system to counter the system, used knowledge to break down barriers, and used rationality to reconstruct the order in a closed society where pedigree was the basis of hierarchy.
The struggle of the protagonist Chen Hao is not a solitary struggle of personal heroism. Every step he takes—from becoming independent to becoming the leader of a county trial, from becoming famous in a prefectural city to becoming the prime minister in the capital—continues to verify the same proposition: rules are never monolithic. The key lies in who defines the rules, who enforces them, and who rewrites them.
