Concealing One's Edge in the Great Yin Dynasty

Everyone in Luojing says the Xie family's third son is a good-for-nothing. He owes three hundred thousand strings of cash, the eldest princess once splashed tea on him in the street, and even the Cui family's younger generation dares to insult him to his face. But no one knows that the Golden Valley Token in his sleeve commands Zhaoye Bureau, an underground network he has spent ten years building. And no one knows that before drinking, he always runs his index finger around the rim of his cup, because ever since the day his mother died when he was seven, he has never drunk wine poured by anyone else. In the eleventh year of Chengping, the Xie family fell from the clouds into the mud. The people in court thought that after removing the eldest son and sending away the mistress of the household, the Xie family would never rise again. So they magnanimously let this good-for-nothing drink and waste his life away. They laughed at him for being useless. He laughed along, recording every hand they had shown him back then, one by one, in his ledger. On this day, the Cui family's lights went out. Only then did the court realize: the cruelest blade had been hidden all along in the scabbard of the most useless man.