Others who transmigrated to the Song Dynasty copied poems and brewed wine, making fortunes. Xue Chen, however, took one wrong step and became a vanguard of Wang Anshi’s reforms, earning the old faction’s bitter hatred.
Sima Guang called him “a silver-tongued troublemaker,” while Su Shi mocked him as “a grasping official.” Every upright scholar at court wanted to see him torn to pieces.
Xue Chen only smiled faintly. “Go ahead and curse me. Once the Green Sprouts Law and the Labor Service Exemption Law take root, once the Song treasury is no longer empty and the border armies are no longer short of pay, you’ll understand that today’s ‘villain’ is the true backbone of the Song.”
What he hadn’t expected was that the reforms would end in infighting within the New Faction, an emperor’s wavering scales, and a bloody reckoning when the old faction struck back.
With the empire on the brink of collapse, can a “powerful chancellor” hold it up?
