I Opened a Candy Shop in Great Qin, and the First Emperor Came Calling at Midnight

Gu Ming transmigrates into the Qin Dynasty as a commoner, just as he’s about to be dragged off to serve as cannon fodder in Li Xin’s Chu campaign. At his moment of despair, he awakens the Marquis-Making and Chancellor-Appointing System, starting out with a brown sugar workshop. From then on, the scent of “the sweetest thing under heaven” wafts through Xianyang City. All I want is to sell sugar, earn a noble title, and stay alive. Until one night, deep into curfew, a man in black kicks in the door of my shop. He eats my brown sugar rice cakes, drinks my ginger tea, and even wants to be my patron. I laugh at his big talk. “Hey, who are you? Can you overrule the Qin king’s conscription?” He sets down his bowl, his gaze bright as a torch. “My surname is Yin. My given name is Zheng.” Only later do I finally understand: Put Yin Zheng together, and it means “king.” He is Ying Zheng, the First Emperor who will conquer the Six States. From then on, my sugar shop becomes the emperor’s private kitchen, and my words become medicine for his heart. As he eats sugar, he asks me about the fate of the realm: “Will Li Xin really lose with an army of two hundred thousand?” As he drinks tea, he listens to my predictions about life and death: “If Your Majesty doesn’t rest and recover, you may not live to fifty.” When I sell brown sugar at sky-high prices, bring the Mohists under my wing, and the court officials impeach me for “bewitching the emperor,” Ying Zheng drinks down my brown sugar water and proclaims to all under heaven: “His sugar can cure my illness.” “His words can bring peace to my empire.” “It’s time to give the Qin chancellorship to someone else.”