Great Ming: I'm a Construction Worker, So Why Are You Forcing Me to Rule the World?

In the spring of the sixteenth year of the Chongzhen reign, I became the most miserable transmigrator in the Ming dynasty. I opened my eyes to find my wife conspiring with someone to set me on fire. As the flames rose, the Construction Worker System activated. Starting out as an ordinary laborer in Chencang City, I showed the Ming dynasty what the “art of infrastructure mania” could do. I built Little Red Tower in ten days. My seepage irrigation system saved countless lives and made the Little Ice Age a joke. I scattered chili powder from gliders and captured 150,000 rebel troops, even taking their king, Li Zicheng, prisoner. Ostrich-leather boots trampled across the Central Plains, spring-steel soles covered three hundred li a day, and giant eight-wheeled sail-powered infantry vehicles swept across the realm. Before the Tartar cannons could fire, my iron-clad Qin army was already bearing down on them... Gentry and Confucian scholars denounced me for “undermining the moral order,” but with standardized assembly lines, I put millions of refugees to work building roads that crisscrossed China. The sages’ books could not save a world in chaos. Shovels, pickaxes, and calipers could. You measure the world with sharp blades, schemes, and political maneuvering. I’ll reshape the land with massive infrastructure. From the dust of post roads crushed beneath ostrich-leather boots, to steam-powered ironclad ships in the Strait of Malacca, to European castles shadowed by powered triplanes, this is the story of an infrastructure fanatic’s rise as a tyrant of labor. In the end, heavy industry will grind this chaotic age to dust.