The Gatekeeper: The Sharpest Eyes in Dream of the Red Chamber

He stood beside the desk and gave a knowing look.

That look was faster than a blade and fiercer than fire.

A great fire at the Hulu Temple burned away a young novice's life behind the monastery gates. He grew his hair out, entered government service, and became a gatekeeper at the Yingtian Prefecture office. Ten years later, when Jia Yucun arrived to take up his post, he recognized the poor scholar who had once lodged at the temple, and recognized the secret he had hidden deep in his bones.

A list of officials to protect, four great families, and a murder case. The gatekeeper offered advice, Jia Yucun judged the case, and a human life was worth a few taels of silver. He thought he had attached himself to a powerful patron, never realizing that the words "knowing too much" were the sharpest blade in officialdom.

"They found an excuse" to send him into exile a thousand miles away.

Ten years later, he came back. He opened a teahouse across from the yamen, and hid a ledger beneath the counter. He waited for Jia Yucun to fall, waited for an explanation, waited for that look to be repaid. But when Jia Yucun was escorted out through the city gate and turned to look at him, he suddenly realized that he wasn't seeing an enemy, but a mirror.

He was not the one who would bring Jia Yucun to an end. He was the beginning of another Jia Yucun.

He crawled out of the ashes of Hulu Temple, learned to survive in government service, staked everything on the advice he offered, and was crushed beneath the backlash of power. Then, over ten years, he pieced himself back together, only to discover that the person he had rebuilt was exactly like the man who had driven him to ruin.

Everyone is a "gatekeeper" within some system.

The look you give someone else is the very look they give you.

The first knowing look in Dream of the Red Chamber is not about another person. It is about fate itself.