A Secretary's Rise: Becoming Chancellor in the Song Dynasty

Lin Ziyang, a paperwork grunt in the office of the Huzhou Public Security Bureau, stayed up all night rushing out a thirty-thousand-word proposal. When he woke, he had transmigrated to the third year of Xining in the Northern Song.

He was now a low-ranking clerk in Ningyuan County, Tianshui, Gansu: a ninth-rank nobody who handled documents and copied official correspondence, not even a proper official. He had no connections, no backing, and less than two taels of silver to his name. His only advantage was that his phone had come with him, and its Doubao AI could still get online.

Wang Anshi’s reforms had turned the world upside down, and the struggle between the old and new factions had spread from the court to the county offices. The county magistrate belonged to the new faction, while the county deputy was an old-faction man. Caught between them, Lin Ziyang could be crushed to pieces by one careless move.

Fortunately, writing reports was much the same in any age. Research reports, implementation plans, work summaries: give them a classical Chinese veneer and the substance is unchanged. Write what the boss wants to hear, then add some practical details. Using AI to look things up and modern thinking to break deadlocks, Lin Ziyang climbed the ladder from a minor county clerk, one step at a time.

But every bit of phone battery used was gone for good. His golden finger was no cure-all, and at the crucial moment he would still have to rely on his own abilities. From clerk to registrar, from the county office to the prefectural capital, from the provinces to the imperial court. The rise of a modern paperwork grunt in the Song Dynasty, and an underdog’s path to power across a thousand years.