The Qingxi Register of the Great Ming

At sixteen, Shen Zhao tended the twelve mu of ancestral rice paddies in Qingxi County, and guarded the last vestige of a scholar's conscience. The powerful Yan family had their eye on that land. An invisible noose tightened around the Shen family's neck. At the temple fair on the ninth day of the ninth month, a nine-year-old girl with a straw tag in her hair was led away by a matchmaker for 580 copper coins. He emptied his pockets, but couldn't save her. "Know that something cannot be done, and do it anyway." He remembered his teacher's words for the rest of his life. So the impoverished scholar embarked on the civil service examination path: the county exam, the provincial exam, two failures, then success in the provincial exam. Next came the journey north to the metropolitan exam, where he failed, was imprisoned, and was assigned an official post. He always kept two things hidden: a ledger spanning thirty years, and a booklet filled with his grievances. This world devours people without even spitting out their bones, but he was determined to record it all: land, water, moon, people, no better than frogs. Why should it be them? Why should it be the Shen family? At the height of the Ming dynasty, the poor were as insignificant as ants. A scholar who knew the odds were impossible but pressed on regardless, and the Qingxi Book, filled with every grievance he had.