The Last Edict of Great Sheng

The Great Sheng Dynasty had stood for one hundred and seventy years. The emperor was gravely ill, the crown prince had died suddenly, and everyone at court was waiting for a new struggle over power to begin. Shen Yan, a minor official in the Ministry of Rites, unexpectedly received a secret edict in the emperor’s own hand. It read: The crown prince is not my son, and I am not the late emperor’s son either. More bizarre still, the personal seal on the edict belonged to Shen Yan’s father, Shen Guanhai, who had been executed ten years earlier. Following the clues in the edict, Shen Yan discovered that his father had not betrayed the country. He had been investigating a secret the royal family had buried for over a century: the emperors of the Great Sheng Dynasty might not all have shared the same royal bloodline. As his investigation deepened, Shen Yan was dragged into a succession struggle, a border army rebellion, a shadow war among salt merchants, and a palace coup. He had thought he was clearing his father’s name, but later discovered that his father had been part of a plan to overthrow the dynasty. And the so-called “late emperor’s final edict” was not meant to choose the next emperor. Its true purpose was to prove that the entire Great Sheng Dynasty had been a deception from the very beginning.