Words and Blades

Shen Yan, a modern scholar of culture, transmigrates to the Eastern Jin era, during the Yonghe reign, after an academic accident. He finds himself in the body of an impoverished scion from a collateral branch of the Shen clan of Wuxing. He breaks the deadlock with a metaphysical debate, brings Daoist thought into Confucianism, and bests the elite of the great clans in argument, making a name for himself in Jiankang. From then on, he enters officialdom through his literary talent and navigates the narrow gaps between the great clans. Over the course of five life-and-death struggles involving political marriages, northern campaigns, factional strife, reforms, and palace coups, he engages the great clans in a tug-of-war that lasts twenty years. Using scholarly debate as his blade, political maneuvering as his game, and love as his shackles, the book tells the complete story of how a modern soul rises from an impoverished collateral branch to become a new aristocrat who can sway the court amid the turbulent currents of Eastern Jin clan politics.