Great Yan: When the Accounts Don't Balance, Heads Roll

In the fourteenth year of the Jingyuan reign of the Great Yan, ten thousand shi of grain went missing from the government granary south of Donglai City. The books listed the cause as "washed away by the river."

No one dared ask where the grain had washed away to. Lin Bei, the new bookkeeper, asked, "Whether it washed away or not, we'll know once we weigh it."

In his previous life, he was an accountant. He worked for three years and scored just 59 on his year-end assessment. On the first day after transmigrating, he owed eighteen taels and four qian and got his face swollen by a punch. He didn't cry or beg. He pulled out his abacus and calculated the compensation according to the law: a bloodied, swollen face was worth two taels. "That punch of yours costs two taels."

Later, he discovered that this dynasty's accounts were even more rotten than the ones he'd dealt with in his previous life.

Forty percent of the stone blocks had vanished from a river levee. Salt permits changed hands three times on paper, while the salt remained in the sea. The books claimed a granary held eighty thousand shi, though it had never been full, not even on the day it was completed. Men who had been dead for three years were still drawing wages.

His method was simple, if foolish: follow every transaction to the end and make the person who signed for it read their own name aloud.

The trouble was, those signatories kept rising in rank, from county magistrate's deputy to minister, from minister to prince. The final name was written on the imperial desk.

All he had was a cracked abacus, a ledger that counted back year by year, and his own life. When the abacus clacked, dead accounts came to light, and people could go blind.

He once said, "The law may spare the crowd, but it will punish the ringleaders."