During the Yongle period, Huaibei farmers cultivated and stored millet for ten years and developed unique skills: just by looking at the water marks, mildew lines, and cracked waist marks on the rice grains, it was possible to trace the source of the grain and expose fraud in the renovation of tribute grains. In order to support her brothers and sisters who were affected by the disaster, she passed two levels of selection and entered the palace to work at Guanglu Temple. When she first entered the palace, she discovered the strange diseases of the palace residents and uncovered the shady story of food replacement at the bottom of the Shangshi Bureau.
Duan Bing, a censor from a poor family outside the palace, gave up the noble family in the Hanlin Academy and took the initiative to take on the water transport corruption case. The two crossed paths due to a major grain corruption case. One line goes inward, Tian Su fights against the eunuch forces of Guanglu Temple and the Supervisor of Ceremonies who tampered with annual tributes and withheld food materials layer by layer; one line goes outward, Duan Bing digs deep into the multi-layered black network of official and merchant smuggling in the Grand Canal, expropriation of state and county taxes, and border military supply corruption. The three factions of civil and military eunuchs colluded, forming institutionalized nationwide corruption tacitly approved by the emperor.
With no support from nobles in the family, the two peeled off layer upon layer of evidence with only food evidence and legal documents. Along the way, they met the account-keeping palace maid, the water transport merchant, and the medicine girl Shen Qingling who was responsible for the bloody vengeance of the empty seal case. She endured and lurked for half her life, holding the ultimate ironclad evidence of the eminent military medicine's fraud, and finally committed martyrdom to seal her crime.
The great corruption in both the government and the public was brought to justice, and the two men reshaped the clean government regulations on water transportation, palace meals, and military supplies. However, the emperor's art of using corruption to fill the treasury and check and balance the courtiers has never ceased. A grain of grain can see the prosperous and prosperous times, and a body of autumn frost can hardly eliminate the chronic disease of the millennium system. It is the festering background under the prosperous appearance of Yongle that can be seen by those who work hard from a poor family.
Purpose: Using grain and food services as an incision, it exposes the institutionalized corruption under the checks and balances of the Yongle Dynasty, writes about the poor people who stick to their conscience through hard work, explores the institutional tragedy that cannot be eradicated behind the prosperity of the prosperous times, and interprets the deep core of the emperor's balance that cannot be changed by autumn frost.