Great Ming: Princess, Don't Panic, I'm Really Here to Take the Imperial Exam

[Ding! Your Hengshui top-scorer experience pass has expired. Welcome to the Hongzhi era of the Ming dynasty!]

Lin Mo wakes up to find himself a poor, idle freeloader outside the capital of the Ming dynasty. His former self spent his days cockfighting and dog walking, was hopeless at school, and yet drained his second and third uncles’ families of every penny to pay for his education!

Faced with a penniless household and the resentful stares of his relatives, the academic overachiever Lin Mo grins. The imperial exams? Practice questions? That’s exactly how I got into Tsinghua!

From then on, he throws himself into essay drills every day, while putting his math and science knowledge to use improving the stove and inventing snacks. Before long, life is visibly getting better.

One day, while out for a stroll, he “picks up” a rich young lord with an unusual way of thinking, Brother Zhu. They hit it off instantly, climbing onto roofs and catching fish in rivers. Their inventions nearly blow up the imperial garden, and their popular stories take the whole capital by storm!

Lin Mo thinks he’s found a brother who’s worth having, someone who’ll share the blame when things go wrong. That is, until the day of the palace examination, when he looks up and sees the grinning Crown Prince beside the throne. Isn’t that his hapless brother, Zhu Houzhao?!

Emperor Hongzhi watches his son and this “someone else’s perfect child” cause trouble day after day, and his blood pressure shoots up. “Drag them out and give them fifty strokes each!” (The paddles: “Do I need to go easy again?”)

They get beaten, they make trouble, but the two really do manage to create new crops and ships, and even... nearly pry open the Ming dynasty’s maritime ban!

Then one day, Lin Mo is ranting about rumors of a spoiled princess: “I wouldn’t marry her if I were a dog!”

Only for the sweet and clever Princess Zhu Xiurong herself to catch him in the act.

“Your Highness, I was wrong... Wait, why aren’t you anything like the rumors?”

“You wouldn’t marry me if you were a dog? Hmm?” The princess smiles sweetly.

Lin Mo’s scalp tingles. He steels himself and says, “A dog wouldn’t marry you. I will!”