The story of Lin Mo, a Wall Street trader who transmigrates to the late Ming dynasty and rises from a salt merchant's live-in son-in-law to a financial tycoon who shapes the fate of the realm.
On his wedding day, he witnesses his bride, Zhang Wanzhao, about to be drowned in a pond after her family frames her. Then the "Macroeconomic Simulator" in his mind suddenly activates, revealing the crises and opportunities of the late Ming salt market. A Wanli government bond dismissed as worthless paper becomes his first weapon. Using compound-interest formulas and legal statutes, he squeezes 80,000 taels of silver from a money house, exposes his father-in-law's salt-license scam, makes a fortune from Jiangnan salt merchants with "futures contracts," and schemes to take control of the Caobang's illicit salt trade. As the salt market collapses, he builds his own business empire.
From the Jiangnan Salt Merchants Alliance to a "bill revolution," he uses modern financial thinking to reshape the commercial rules of the late Ming. He encounters the mathematical prodigy Chen Yuanyuan, and together they investigate exam fraud and uncover corruption in military provisions. When Wei Zhongxian's "invitation" arrives, Lin Mo heads north to the capital with 500,000 taels of silver, confronting the eight great Shanxi merchant houses that monopolize the money trade and setting his sights on the massive loopholes in Liaodong's military provisions.
He uses candlestick charts to analyze court power struggles and futures strategies to bet against the foundations of imperial rule. Amid the tangled web of salt licenses, government bonds, silver, and ledgers, he sets off a "subprime crisis" in the late Ming. When a Wall Street trader meets the tottering Great Ming, will finance strangle imperial power, or will the momentum of history ultimately devour everything? This high-stakes gamble across time has only just begun.
