Xu Qingci was born into a family of merchants. In the Zhou Dynasty, the children of merchants had a low status and were not allowed to participate in the imperial examinations. He spent all his family wealth and secretly bought a childbirth qualification, but was reported as a fraud, imprisoned, and faced beheading. On death row, a mysterious old man taught him a three-day solution to the problem and helped him make a comeback. He sang songs all the way through the provincial examination, the general examination, and the palace examination, from the son of a merchant despised by everyone to the youngest number one scholar in the Great Zhou Dynasty. But every question the old man taught him corresponded to a hidden case of the time - behind the imperial examination, he was the one who reversed the case for the old man. With every step he takes, he is one step closer to the truth and one step closer to death.
