I Am a Literary Giant in Ancient Times tells the story of Shen Yanshu, a modern scholar who unexpectedly transmigrates to the war-torn Nine Provinces Warring States era and awakens in the body of a frail young nobleman in the frontier city of Yingdu. Here, seven states vie for dominance and a hundred schools of thought contend. Mohist mechanical beasts roam the battlefield, Yin-Yang practitioners read the stars and divine fortunes, and Confucians wield literary energy like a sword. Meanwhile, Yingdu is divided among warlords, and its people live in misery.
With his modern memory and an ability to remember everything he sees, Shen Yanshu uses literature to turn the tide: he reproduces The Art of War to reform the military, copies The Exploitation of the Works of Nature to revolutionize agricultural machinery, and passes off Li Bai's poems as his own to intimidate the literary circles of rival states. He even turns the supposedly useless black stones in the barren hills around Yingdu into coke, building the other world’s first firearms battalion. While other states still charge with chariots, Yingdu has already mounted improved red-haired cannons on its city walls.
Yet the road to power is fraught with danger:
- The Jixia Academy denounces his work as
