After failing the civil service exam, losing his lover, and seeing his career in government collapse, Lin Chengan spent half his life learning one thing: take a wrong turn, and you may spend the rest of your life paying for it.
When he opened his eyes again, he was twenty-four, in the height of summer in Dongjiang City, and an unremarkable post at the Linjiang District Discipline Inspection Commission was still open. Everyone thought he was just an ordinary young man with no connections and nowhere else to turn. Only Lin Chengan knew that over the next twenty years, urban expansion, the old-neighborhood redevelopment boom, industrial relocation, financial time bombs, and local government debt would all arrive, one after another.
In this life, he begins with a dust-covered letter in the public complaints office. He investigates corruption, tackles redevelopment, attracts investment, revitalizes county economies, and defuses debt crises, holding fast to his principles amid factional struggles and the lure of power.
He doesn't want to be an innocent bystander. He just wants to be a truly useful official.
