A Hardcore Engineer Arrives in the Great Ming

In the fourth year of Yongle, Emperor Chengzu of the Ming, Zhu Di, ordered the capital moved to Beijing and launched a massive construction project to build the Forbidden City. But a superb piece of golden-thread nanmu weighing sixty thousand jin is stuck deep in the mountains of Sichuan. Two Imperial Timber Supervisors have died under mysterious circumstances, and everyone at the Ministry of Works considers the assignment a death sentence.

Xu Yichen, a top modern project manager, unexpectedly transmigrates into the body of a low-ranking clerk in the Ministry of Works’ Office of Waterways. As soon as he arrives, his immediate superior gets him drunk and sets him up, forcing him to sign a military pledge: transport the sacred timber to the capital within four months, or face immediate execution.

Ahead lie sheer cliffs and raging rapids. Behind him are corrupt officials who have embezzled the project funds and are waiting to make him take the fall. At his side is a group of laborers who cannot even read. Faced with this impossible KPI, Xu Yichen awakens the [Great Ming Project Coordination System].

“Following procedures is a rule for the weak. Coordination is a weapon for the strong!”

No money? Get merchant guilds to contribute and set up an ancient version of the PPP model, a public-private partnership!

Can’t transport the timber? Calculate the flood season and freeze-up, then use dry-dock boats, ice roads, pulley systems, and rail carts to crush the problem with physics!

Starting with the transport of a single sacred tree, Xu Yichen sets the Great Ming Empire on a wildly ambitious infrastructure-building spree. He dredges the Grand Canal to solve a grain transport crisis involving a million shi of grain, coordinates the extreme long-distance supply chain for Zheng He’s voyages to the Western Seas, and organizes the impossible military logistics for an army of five hundred thousand on its northern campaign against the Mongolian steppe…

Watch as a modern wage slave cuts a path through a murderous feudal bureaucracy with rigorous operations research and modern engineering, eventually becoming the chief architect of an empire on which the sun never sets!