Fishmonger Fang Mian transmigrates to the Ming dynasty and discovers that his classmate is none other than the future Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng. One has an empty purse but a head full of audacious schemes; the other has the whole world on his mind but needs a “mastermind” at his side. This unlikely pair uses business savvy and knowledge of history to turn the bizarre court of the Jiajing and Wanli eras into a thrilling tale of entrepreneurial success.
The prefectural school mocks him as a “fishmonger”? He turns around and uses Arabic numerals to demolish their muddled bookkeeping, stunning the professors!
A local bully blocks an alley to extort him? One jar of stinky fermented bean sauce sends the vicious dogs turning on their master. What a rush!
The upright officials spread rumors? He gets ordinary jokesters to cook up even crazier gossip, leaving his opponents socially ruined!
Reform can be “audacious,” too:
Attendance is too much trouble? → Invent a “duck-based performance system,” where working earns “quack points”!
Surveying farmland? → Send out child scouts to secretly measure the rich men’s land and distribute a booklet with a “magical land-survey map”!
Not enough money for the army? → Launch battlefield canned-food delivery, and Qi Jiguang cries, “This is delicious!”
Qi Jiguang: Won over by Fang Mian’s “compressed military rations,” he becomes a staunch comrade!
Feng Bao: Won over with candy, he becomes the best source of palace gossip!
The Jiajing Emperor: Fang Mian uses chemical omens to fool the Taoist emperor into supporting reform!
Hai Rui: Fang Mian frantically smooths things over. “Lord Hai, take a break. I’ll do the scolding!”
A satisfying win-win ending, with no regrets:
Zhang Juzheng is condemned after his death? Fang Mian has already established a base in the South Seas and turned the Zhang family into a wealthy merchant clan!
Their ideas live on through a secret academy, and their manuscripts are hidden between the pages of the Veritable Records of the Ming!
Having achieved success, Fang Mian retires and fishes in the sunshine. “Old Zhang, we’ve come out ahead this time!”
“Classmate, you’re going to be Grand Secretary one day? What a coincidence, I’m a transmigrator! Want to team up? I’ll handle making money and covering things up, and you can look handsome while governing the country.”
It is a simple, easy-to-read and beautiful historical time travel novel.