Two hundred years after the Dao collapsed, only one ledger remains in the world.
It says who counts as a person, and who owes what to whom. If you're not in the ledger, you don't count as a person.
When Shen Yan was seven, his mother died. People without household registration aren't entered in the ledger when they die. If they're not entered, it's as if they never lived. Not a single person in town wrote down a word about her.
So he did it himself.
One brush, one ledger, seven years of keeping records. Forty-seven households, one hundred and sixty-three people. Who owed whom a dou of millet, who owed whom a padded coat. Every entry clear as day.
He collected debts for people, charging two coins per entry.
Then the officials of Nine Cities arrived with blank ledgers and an iron ruler. They said they were here to clear the land, register it, and take a census. They didn't hit anyone or curse at anyone. Every word they spoke had a citation, and everything they did followed procedure.
They only had one thing to say:
