The Shen Family's Shadow Play

The Shen family, a powerful silk clan in Jiangnan, is full of cunning members. The matriarch wields propriety as a blade, the second master uses scheming as armor, and the children each harbor their own secrets. Everyone believes the eldest son, Shen Yuzhang, is a useless invalid—a sickly man who only sings Kunqu opera. But when the family collapses under the weight of the era and internal strife, the survivors realize that the most useless one was the true heir of the Shen family. What he inherited was not the silk factory, but an invisible intelligence network. "Did you think I was just an actor?" — Description from novelcodex.org