The Directorate of Ceremonial

The Directorate of Ceremonial is a long alternate-history novel by the web author Aogu Tiexin, serialized on Baidu Novels and other platforms from September 2020 and completed in October 2024, totaling about 1,700 chapters and over four million characters. The story is set in the Wanli era of the Ming dynasty: a modern person transmigrates into the second son of the Wei family (Li Zirong; other sources give Wei Liangchen or Wei Liangchen, with platform accounts differing), intending to live quietly as a farmer's son, only to discover that the historically famous Wei Zhongxian is his own uncle. He therefore hurries to the capital to rely on his uncle, only to find that at this point Wei Zhongxian is merely a lowly menial eunuch in a horse stable. To enjoy wealth and honor in the future, the protagonist must, relying on his shallow knowledge of history, push his uncle step by step up the ladder of power, while he himself rises from a petty figure in the marketplace through posts such as garrison eunuch of Jiangnan and imperially appointed superintendent eunuch of maritime affairs, finally entering the ranks of the Directorate of Ceremonial as a scribe. The book depicts the rises and falls of officialdom in a tone of jest and invective, interspersed with absurd episodes such as sleeping on the floor of the Qianqing Palace, and portrays the power struggles among the inner court, the civil official faction, and the guard bureaus with great liveliness, presenting the operating rules of the Ming bureaucratic system within a light narrative while also asking, through the characters' choices, how power alienates human nature.