After Her Entire Family Was Slaughtered, She Passed the Imperial Exams and Joined the Court to Reopen the Case

On the night her father is brutally killed, Shen Zhaowei learns that the sixteen years of peace she has enjoyed were bought with someone else’s life.

After her family is massacred, she takes the name Lin Wei and flees to Jiangnan. By day, she is a poor student at Luming Academy, dismissed by everyone. By night, she enters the waterways of the Caobang, investigating old ship manifests, digging through old records, and building alliances with jianghu factions.

The great families mock her for coming from a merchant household, but she wins top honors and outshines every other scholar. The authorities think she has no power or influence, yet she rescues flood victims and stabilizes the grain routes, earning the gratitude of half of Jiangnan. The court wants the old case buried forever, but she insists on carrying her pen into the Golden Hall and turning the world upside down over the blood debt from sixteen years ago.

Everyone thinks she is merely the orphan left behind by Master Shen.

It is only when the old case is reopened and the fire that once engulfed the Eastern Palace flares anew that the officials throughout the court finally learn

She is no orphan.

She is the person who was supposed to have died in the Eastern Palace all those years ago.