After transmigrating as Luo Cheng’s illegitimate son and being hunted by his legitimate wife, he stays alive by “playing at the supernatural” with little chemistry experiments. He invents “Zhenguan mahjong,” which takes Chang’an by storm, and Cheng Yaojin gets so addicted that he loses the waistband of his trousers. He accidentally uncovers an imperial examination fraud, only to be framed himself, then proves his genius with calculus. He forms the “Bad People Delivery Corps,” uses carrier pigeons to deliver food and crack secret Turkic messages, and when the Turks invade south, Little Seventeen drives them back with “gunpowder fireworks.” He is made a county baron and founds the “Great Tang Institute of Technology,” whose students include a princess disguised as a man. Using statistics, they expose the Five Great Families and Seven Noble Houses for monopolizing the imperial examinations, but Little Seventeen is then targeted by assassins with poisoned arrows. He fakes his death and escapes to the Western Regions, where he becomes a “Silk Road merchant” and builds an intelligence network. At a Tibetan marriage proposal banquet, Little Seventeen arrives in a hot-air balloon and steals the bride, making Gar Tongtsen cry with rage. He develops “Wooden Ox and Gliding Horse 2.0” and sweeps across the northern deserts, while Cheng Yaojin gets hooked on working as a courier. They launch a transoceanic expedition against Japan and force the emperor to surrender with “chili pepper bombs.” After discovering the Australian continent, he establishes the “Great Tang South Seas Branch” and raises kangaroos as mounts. In a naval battle against the Arab Empire, he uses “compasses and fireworks” to pass them off as divine punishment.
