Spring Fever

A corruption case in Ningzhou pulls down a whole official household. Ye Qinglan is that official's daughter, and when the family falls she is stripped of her standing and entered into slave registers. Shen Que is the young lord of Xuan Manor. He has spent his time keeping his head down and waiting, and he moves through the case in disguise, letting people take him for someone smaller than he is while he collects what actually happened in Ningzhou. The two of them end up working the same case from different sides, she with what she knows of her father's dealings and the people who came and went from his house, he with the reach that a manor still has when nobody is looking. What began as one man's corruption charge turns out to run further than the ledgers, into a conspiracy that several people with power would rather stay buried, and the investigation costs both of them more the closer they get to the names behind it.