The Leap from Castoff to Alpha

He had been the youngest sociological scholar at the Academy of Social Sciences. But when he woke up one day, he had become the useless Ninth Prince, locked in the imperial prison to await death after being forced to drink poison.

Everyone said the three northern frontier commanderies were a death trap: people froze to death in winter, starved to death in summer, and the barbarians sacked their cities year after year. Being exiled there was just another way to die.

But they didn't know that the one who had arrived was no useless prince, but a tiger.

Modern knowledge gave him an overwhelming advantage, and he started an industrial revolution from scratch. Cement walls rose from the ground, rifle-bearing cavalry swept across the grasslands, potatoes yielded two thousand jin per mu, and soap and liquor brought back mountains of gold and silver.

A year later, when his lofty elder brother sent an army of eighty thousand, what awaited them was an impregnable city and a pair of eyes as cold as blades.

"Want my life? Come and take it yourself."