The Elegance of a Strategist: A Glimmer of Light

The old dynasty had rotted through three hundred years. Land was swallowed up by powerful families, the northern frontier was slowly lost, and seventy percent of the people could barely breathe under the burden. Everyone knew the realm was doomed, but no one knew what would come after its fall. Danyang City had a good-for-nothing who had spent fifteen years tending trees, drinking cold wine, and basking in the sun. He never even attended the family school. On the night of the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth lunar month, someone came to raid his home. By dawn, three of them were dead and two had fled. The gates of the Du family’s old estate were still closed, just as they had been the day before. After that, Danyang City began to take note of his name: Du Yun, Du Weiguang. He had spent fifteen years doing one thing: picking up, one by one, the people abandoned by the powerful families. A veteran crippled at the border, a bookkeeper who had narrowly escaped being silenced, a prince who climbed over his wall to find him, a female duchess in a silver mask, and an upright censor who had spent half his life writing false memorials. From them, he wove an invisible net. When he pulled it tight, the powerful families fell one after another. A new dynasty rose, inch by inch. Everyone thought he would take his seat at the very center of that net. He did not. The old dynasty had rotted through three hundred years. The new dynasty truly began the day one man walked away. A faint glimmer, lighting up three hundred years of rotten darkness!