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.
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Aogu Tiexin is an author of online historical fiction. Public information about the author is limited: the real name, place of origin, and dates of birth and death have not been clearly recorded, and twelve of the author's works are held in the database. Judging from representative titles such as Sili Jian (The Directorate of Ceremonial), Dongchang (The Eastern Depot), Han'er Bu Wei Nu (Han People Are Not Slaves), Da Ming Lang Qi (The Ming Wolf Cavalry), and Da Liu Kou (The Great Vagrants), the author's writing focuses on historical alternate-history fiction set in the Ming dynasty and the Ming–Qing transition, often using eunuch institutions, frontier cavalry, and wandering armed groups as narrative entry points. The works circulate in the men's fiction and historical fiction categories and appear in curated premium fiction listings. The writing tends to build its plots around concrete historical frameworks and to explore individual choices and power struggles in times of turmoil, giving it a recognizable presence among readers of historical alternate history.
