On the first day after transmigrating, Gu Changqing was kneeling on the execution platform. The original owner was a charlatan who had beaten the Imperial Preceptor in a "spell duel" three days earlier. Today, he was to be executed.
Before the blade fell, he glanced at the sky and shouted, "If I'm innocent, let heaven send a downpour to prove it!"
It really rained.
That very night, the emperor summoned him to the palace and tasked the "new Imperial Preceptor" with explaining an ominous portent that had puzzled him for half a year. The High Priest of the Northern Di came to challenge him in a spell duel, the officials begged for the gods to show their power, and the emperor personally placed the Grand Inspector's seal in his arms.
No one knew that he had made up the prophecy on the spot, gambled on the weather, and hired people to feed fish for thirty-one days to make egrets face the rising sun. The only things he knew were science and the human heart.
But with every lie he told, the emperor's trust grew, and his enemies' blades drew an inch closer. Someone was delivering "Heaven's will" to the emperor for him, while someone else was quietly picking off everyone who knew the truth.
"No one can ever calculate incorrectly," the late former Imperial Preceptor had written in his notebook as his final line, "unless... he isn't calculating at all."
Gu Changqing wiped away his sweat and decided to keep calculating. After all, he could make every boast he'd made come true with his own hands. And if one boast fell apart, he could always make an even bigger one.
