[Alternate History + Imperial Exams and Officialdom + Photographic Memory + Overwhelming Advantage + Decisive and Ruthless]
Three years of exams, and not a single pass? His unscrupulous uncle comes demanding payment, threatening to sell his younger sister to settle the family’s land debt. Worse, he secretly conspires with licensed scholars to deny him a guarantor, hoping to cut off his path to the imperial examinations for good!
In this hellish start, Lin Yuan, a frail and refined scholar from a poor family, smiles gently in the cold wind.
A serious illness awakens memories from his previous life, when he was a history PhD at Peking University, as if they were etched into his soul. His brain’s limits are shattered, granting him absolute “photographic memory”!
He has no System interface, but the cultural legacy of five thousand years of Chinese history and a library of countless volumes in his mind are his most formidable trump cards.
A contest of poetry and prose? This world has never heard of the Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song dynasties. Li Bai’s and Su Shi’s immortal verses come readily to hand!
A contest of policies for governing the realm? Thousands of years of imperial statecraft and a sweeping view of history let him crush the literary world of his era!
Beneath his frail exterior lies a soul that looks down from a higher plane and never forgives a slight. Cross him for money? He’ll have your family dispossessed and sent into exile! Ruin his future? He’ll use your own influence to crush you!
From taking first place in the county exams to sweeping all six top examination honors, Lin Yuan climbs to the heights of success, trampling his enemies and ancient prodigies along the way.
Then comes the palace examination. At court, the officials challenge him, and the emperor puts him to the test in person.
Lin Yuan calmly steps forward and puts brush to paper.
When the results are posted the next day, the entire court falls silent. The chief councillor stares at Lin Yuan’s exam paper, his hands trembling. After a long while, he sighs and slowly removes the black gauze cap from his head. “After reading this paper, I can only say the sages’ books I’ve studied for sixty years... might as well have gone unread!”
