The moment Lu Yan opened his eyes, he had become the biggest joke in the capital. The Prince of Zhennan was dead, his military command had been taken away, and his stipend had been stopped. In front of a hall full of guests, his fiancee, Liu Shutong, broke off their engagement.
He had planned to eat his fill and wait for death. But he couldn't swallow this humiliation.
That night, he sent a poem to the Liu residence. By the next day, half the capital was repeating its lines. On the third day, a queue had formed outside the struggling Song Family Bookshop.
Others relied on their family status to spread their poetry. He used a single poem to force open the gates of the capital. The poetry gathering wouldn't let him take a seat, but his poem made its way inside from beyond the door. After the great scholar Gu Heng read it, he staked his posthumous reputation on Lu Yan's verse.
From an empty title of heir at the engagement banquet to a man whose lines the whole city could recite, all Lu Yan needed was one sheet of paper.
