Stone Heart: Twenty Years from Dust to Destiny

Chen Shitou paid his taxes and became a lowly yamen servant, hoping to survive through hard labor alone. Instead, he stumbled into a lethal conspiracy of embezzlement and corruption that could crush him like an insect. Cryptic warnings from a seasoned clerk, betrayal by colleagues, anonymous notes in the dead of night—in this flesh-eating bureaucracy, survival demands more than obedience. Armed with nothing but a heart as unyielding as stone and half a flatbread hidden in his shirt, Chen must claw his way from trampled dust to master of his own fate. The climb takes twenty brutal years.