Three Kingdoms: Cao Cao, Brother, You're So Cunning!

Lin Fan, a modern physics student, wakes up in a deserted island in Hainan at the end of the Eastern Han dynasty. Facing the slash-and-burn farming of the Baiyue tribes and the warlords carving up the Central Plains, he applies fluid mechanics to improve ships, uses geometry to lay out terraced fields, refines sulfur in a volcanic crater, and makes fine salt on the beach. By the time Sun Quan is building great ships in Jiangdong, Lin Fan's “Qiongzhou Navy” can already cross the South China Sea against the current. While Liu Bei is garrisoning troops in Shu, Lin Fan's “Sea Salt Caravans” have already sold ironware to the tribes of Nanzhong. And as Cao Cao faces off against his enemies at Guandu, Lin Fan uses the monsoon winds to send merchant ships carrying fire oil into the tributaries of the Yangtze. Everyone thinks this is a barbarian regime, content to huddle on an island. Only when the first flag embroidered with gears and ears of rice is raised over Jianye do the lords and ministers of the Three Kingdoms realize that Qiongzhou, dismissed by the Central Plains as a land of miasma, has already spun a web of influence across the entire south beneath the guise of farming and trade. Lin Fan's ultimate goal was never to remain confined to one corner. As he stands atop the walls of Luoyang, gazing out over the nine provinces, the lodestone compass in his hand points toward oceans far vaster than the lands of the Three Kingdoms.