A Bountiful Tang Dynasty

(This is a transmigration novel, though the protagonist has no earth-shattering golden finger. It's the story of making a living in the Tang dynasty with nothing but a sandbox.) A minor chemical plant clerk dies in a project explosion and transmigrates into the lowest of the low, a charcoal-burning slave in the Tang dynasty. With thirty strokes' worth of injuries on his back, he tends a kiln belching poisonous smoke. He isn't thinking about changing his fate, only about tomorrow's bran dumpling.

He knows nothing of poetry and has no knack for political schemes. His only support is the "Craft Simulation Sandbox" that came with him when he transmigrated. It can calculate how a technology will affect commoners over five years, but it can't predict the wickedness of human nature or when the executioner's blade will fall.

The state monopoly on coal treats human lives as worthless. He wants only to find a way out for 2,300 charcoal workers: using yellow mud water to remove coal toxins, building earthen heating systems with ceramic pipes, and making beehive briquettes to fight the winter cold. Each improvement earns him a little merit in the sandbox, but raises the risk of exposure by ten percent.

He builds an underground technology hub right under the noses of the coal barons, calculating every move and treading on thin ice. He improves the coal, but saves lives. His aim is to let technology spread among the people like a hidden ember, to achieve success without stepping into the light, and to leave no name in the history books.

And so the story begins…