In the twenty-second year of King Zheng of Qin, Li Xin's campaign against Chu is routed at Pingyu. Clerk Meng Heng rechecks the military merit register and finds 3,200 fake enemy heads hidden among the victory reports. His own name is among the signatures. If he investigates, he dies for defying orders; if he doesn't, the fake accounts will be exposed, and the people who handled them will die first. He chooses a fourth path: in public, he strikes out 1,400 of his own credited heads and asks to pay a fine. The official ledger tracks the false merits from penetrating commanders to generals, while a secret ledger records every fraudulent achievement. This register of heads will ultimately have to record whether it lives or dies.
