For generations, the Li family has worked as blacksmiths. Their house is full of burly men with booming voices, and when the furnace blazes, they look like the Eighteen Arhats descended to earth! But the youngest son, Li Zhibai, is a freak: pale, sickly, and too weak to truss a chicken. By the anvil, he looks like a white jade Guanyin statue that somehow fell into a coal heap.
Swing a sledgehammer? Before the hammer even moves, he hits the ground! Work the bellows? He runs out of breath and nearly ascends to heaven on the spot! With the family craft on the verge of dying out, his father weeps and says, “Son, with a body like yours, you can't hammer iron. You can only go hammering on the examination hall doors!”
Li Zhibai: I'm falling apart! I transmigrated as Lin Daiyu, and ended up in a den of macho men! I can't hammer iron or stand the heat? Fine, fine. I guess I'll just have to grit my teeth and earn an official degree.
Who could have guessed he would breeze through the county, prefectural, academy, and provincial exams? From a low-level border official to a grand councilor, he forges a glorious road to success with nothing but a worn-out brush!
Inside the Zichen Hall, the newly appointed Grand Secretary, Lord Li, leisurely rubs the family heirloom black-iron bracer on his wrist, smiling warmly as he says:
“Gentlemen, before you stands the son of a poor blacksmith. If you want to talk reason, I am happy to oblige. If you want to talk strength... This was forged through a thousand hammer strikes. It has battered stubborn iron, and it won't mind testing itself on a few rotten-wood heads.”
The assembled court officials: Suddenly, we have a bit of a headache!
Very nice, five-star praise