The Secrets of Heaven Within Me

Lin Xiangbei, twenty-six, with a degree in Chinese from a second-tier university. When he opened his eyes, he had arrived in the fifth year of the Qingli era of the Northern Song, clutching a bloodstained bamboo tube. A corpse lay beside him, and pursuers were kicking at the door.

To pay off thirty taels of gambling debt, he stood in for someone at a poetry gathering and copied out a modern poem. All the talented scholars there called him a "mule of a literary man." Then, during an autumn downpour, he casually remarked, "It's going to rain hard," and Master Chen took it as a revelation from Heaven. He used communicating vessels to measure level, and diversion embankments and flood-control dams to redirect the river and solve the flooding on the Bian River. The people knelt before him and hailed him as a "Sage of Heavenly Secrets."

Modern poems became prophecies, everyday knowledge became supernatural power. He was hoisted onto an altar, climbing ever higher and sinking ever deeper.

At the poetry contest, his poem "Answer" brought him a death sentence. Wanted posters covered Bianjing, and the truth behind the massacre of the Lin family nineteen years ago began to surface. In prison, Shen Qingci tested him with a forged secret letter. On the riverbank, she saw through him: "a liar who doesn't hurt people." When his golden finger failed, he finally understood: there was no heavenly secret. There was only the truth.

So he started the Heavenly Secrets Monthly, using a newspaper to print the truth for everyone to see. But Xia Song's blade was already at his throat. To reopen the case before the emperor, he was wagering more than just his own life.

He had copied too many poems by other people.

For the last line, he wanted to write it himself.