The Ming Dynasty’s Chief Grand Secretary: Starting with a Civil Service Exam Prep School

Shen Mo transmigrates to Beijing in the 40th year of the Jiajing reign, becoming the son of Shen Lian, a disgraced official. That year, Yan Song and his son hold the imperial court in their grip, while Emperor Jiajing is obsessed with alchemy. His father dies unjustly, and Shen Mo is stripped of the right to sit the imperial examinations, with his family barred from redemption for three generations. But in his previous life, he made study guides for a living. A guide to the imperial examinations takes the capital by storm, turning the obscure art of eight-legged essays into a science. Scholars across Beijing scramble to get their hands on it. He sells study guides, builds his standing, clears his father's name, and takes the exams. By the time everyone thinks he is just a bookseller, he has already begun quietly rewriting the fate of the entire Ming dynasty.