Northern Song: My Family Tree Can Predict the Future

Gu Xing transmigrates to the Northern Song dynasty and becomes the eldest son of a farming family in Jiangnan West Circuit, with a “teacher” who lives in the family genealogy thrown in.

The teacher is remarkably capable: record accounts in the genealogy, and it can calculate price fluctuations; record people in it, and it can predict the inclinations of their hearts. Who will hold the county offices, where the prefecture’s hidden hands will strike: lay out the sand table, and it is all in the palm of your hand.

The teacher is also remarkably blind: it knows nothing that is not written in the genealogy. And this newly compiled family record is only a few pages long, with thirty-seven people, one line per person.

A forged deed to seize their farmland has already been submitted to the county yamen. The ruinous corvee duty of serving as a yamen runner hangs over their heads, and the origin of the eighty strings of cash they were paid for the land is unclear. The whole family is betting on him, their sixteen-year-old eldest son.

Seizing farmland, evading corvee, taking the imperial examinations, opening a shop: Gu Xing leads his family in thickening the family genealogy one page at a time, and raising the Gu family step by step.

The official history of the dynasty has no record of this family, even after a hundred years of searching. But every page of the Gu family genealogy tells their story.

Nameless in the official histories, but named in the genealogy.