Hidden Dragon Under the Account

During the reign of Wei Zhengshi, Luoyang. Xu Zhao was a doctor in Shangshutai Duzhi, with a rank of six hundred stones. The daily job is to check the grain and grass account books sent from various places and pass the time among boring numbers. He is cautious and low-key, and is the most inconspicuous middle-level civil servant in the entire Shangshutai. No one knows that he has another identity - "Xuanniao", a secret intelligence network affiliated to Zhongshu Ling Sunzi, responsible for capturing clues of the undercurrent of the court from official documents and accounts. One day, while cleaning up old documents, he accidentally discovered a fragment of a military account book that should have been reduced to ashes ten years ago. The fragment contained burn marks that had been deliberately forged, and what it recorded was the Hefei fire that nearly killed him. Immediately afterwards, incidents occurred one after another in Luoyang City: an old minister who opposed Cao Shuang's dictatorship was violently killed at home, the military rations shipped to Huainan disappeared out of thin air, and a visitor to Sima Yi's mansion was poisoned. The three events seemed unrelated, but when Xu Zhao checked the accounts, he discovered that they all pointed to the same hidden coordinates - someone was secretly connecting in an attempt to provoke a fight between Cao Shuang and Sima Yi. What sent a chill down his spine was that his behavior of reviewing old files in Hefei had been flagged as early as two months ago. A web that has been woven for ten years is slowly closing. The person weaving the web may be beside him. The only thing Xu Zhao could rely on was a pair of eyes that could see flaws in the numbers, and the bronze crotch that had just been handed over to him. A small official in charge of the accounts dug out a shocking secret battle that shook the Cao Wei court from the yellowed account books.