He opened his eyes to find his family being raided.
The Embroidered Uniform Guard had sealed the accounts office. The entire clan knelt in the central courtyard, with three days to comply.
All Shen Yu had was a ledger.
Three days later, the guards left, and the Shen family survived. He also came to understand one thing: the person who truly wanted him dead was not in Suzhou, but in Nanjing.
That man had abdicated and become the Retired Emperor. His grandson sat on the dragon throne, but even the reign title was still the old emperor's.
So Shen Yu donated nine-tenths of the family fortune to the imperial treasury and personally established the Shen family rules: no clan member could become an official or join the military. Anyone who broke the rules would be executed first, with a report to the court afterward.
When a younger clansman bought an official post, Shen personally oversaw his execution. Afterward, he took off his official robes and went alone to the palace to kneel and confess.
He had made himself someone the emperor could not kill.
That Retired Emperor kept his eyes on him for thirteen years, searching for a hundred reasons to kill him.
Not one of them held up.
