Lin Yuan, a modern man with a background in science and engineering, wakes up to find himself a lowly slave chained inside a mine. His cousin framed him, leaving him with a broken leg oozing pus and barely clinging to life. Worse, a mine disaster in three days will claim the lives of every slave there. When an Encyclopedia System lights up before his eyes, he grasps the first card that could change his fate: he uses spontaneously igniting iron sulfide to create a chance to escape, exploits a fatal loophole in a forged land deed to turn the tables on his enemy, then fakes his death in a catastrophic collapse to get away.
His path to a comeback begins with strategy and ingenuity:
- Rise from the bottom: After escaping the mine, he uses modern infrastructure know-how to improve irrigation and farmland, builds the first concrete arch bridge in the slums, and monopolizes the northern salt industry with glass distillation technology. He rises from leader of the displaced to a wealthy merchant.
- Court intrigue: A down-and-out Crown Prince regards him as a capable statesman, but his land-equalization reforms enrage the aristocracy. He crushes corrupt scholars with calculus in the imperial examination hall, designs repeating crossbow plans using ballistics in the Ministry of War's prison, and engages in a thrilling political showdown with the Chancellor's faction.
- Mentor to emperors: When the Crown Prince is attacked during his accession and the dynasty teeters on the brink of division, Lin Yuan forms a gunpowder corps to crush the princes' rebellion and uses a modern intelligence network to dismantle enemy spies. At last, he stands in the Golden Hall and watches the movable-type printing and new imperial examination reforms he championed sweep across the land.
He was a slave who defied fate, and the mastermind who rewrote history.
When the emperor on the Dragon Throne trembles as he takes Lin Yuan's hand, and envoys from every nation kneel before steam warships, Lin Yuan gazes at the vast expanse of mountains and rivers on the map
