Guide to the Ming Dynasty Public Examination

In the 18th year of Emperor Wu's reign, Li Shangheng, a public examination lecturer at Beijing Vocational School, died suddenly after continuously preparing for lessons. When he woke up, he became the illegitimate son of Ming Dynasty Prime Minister Li Shanchang. No genealogy, no identity, no name - in the Hongwu Dynasty, this meant something worse than death. Because Li Shanchang would be executed by Zhu Yuanzhang in the 23rd year of Hongwu, and his entire family would be executed. And an unrecognized illegitimate child is not even qualified to be executed. The five-year countdown begins. How could a person without identity survive Zhu Yuanzhang's butcher's knife? Li Shangheng uses the weapons he is best at in the modern world: dismantling the system, understanding the rules, and finding a way out of the gaps in the system. There are loopholes in the imperial examination, there are loopholes in the household registration, no matter how strict the laws of the Hongwu Dynasty are, as long as they are rules made by people, there will be cracks. "Rules are for people to follow, not for people to kneel down." But Hongwu Dynasty is not a public examination training class. There is no standard answer here, only life and death. Li Shangheng found that the most difficult thing was not how to pass the imperial examination, but how to stay awake in the whirlpool of power. His father may be betraying him, Zhu Yuanzhang is waiting for an opportunity, and he himself doesn't even have a name. This is a time-travel story about identity, intrigue and survival. When modern thinking meets the ancient power game, how does an unrecognized person use the things in his mind to fight his way out?