Modern-day office drone Xiaren couldn't sleep because his rent had skyrocketed. Then, after a sudden bout of dizziness on the street, he transmigrated into a low-level street thug in Nanjing, the capital of the Ming dynasty, who had the same name as him. From the start, he was on the run for stealing a “tribute chicken.” Then the mysterious Lord Tiger shoved a wooden token into his hands and tricked him into going to the post station as a “study companion.” It looked like a chance to rise to the top overnight, but it was actually riddled with traps.
An anonymous note of warning, a beggar with a suspicious identity, and a reminder that it was the twenty-fifth year of Hongwu made him realize with a start that he'd fallen right into the most perilous power struggle of the early Ming dynasty! The Crown Prince had just died, the Crown Prince's heir had yet to be named, and undercurrents surged through the court. This little nobody had to deal not only with Lord Tiger's relentless pressure, but also survive between volatile eunuchs and powerful, scheming nobles.
Other transmigrators got a System. He had only street smarts and a makeshift grasp of modern knowledge: he used instant-noodle know-how to win the imperial chefs' favor, basic chemistry to expose con artists, and scraps of historical knowledge to guess where the court was headed. But he gradually discovered that the stolen “tribute chicken” concealed a shocking secret, and the strange symbols left by the mysterious beggar were tied to a secret that could topple the Ming dynasty.
When a low-level street thug finds himself caught in the bloodshed of Hongwu's final years, will he become a pawn sacrificed to power, or use his delightfully “brainless” nerve to carve out a comeback, all the way from the slums to the imperial throne room? Xiaren says: Whatever this struggle between dragons and tigers is, first I'll fill my belly, then maybe... save this messed-up Ming dynasty while I'm at it!
