Lin Mo, a modern graduate student in history, transmigrates into the Dayin Dynasty as a poor scholar and the much-despised live-in son-in-law of the Su family. The original host was mocked by his wife’s family for failing to grasp the fashionable art of abstract philosophical discourse. After speaking frankly about the ills of the age at a poetry gathering and offending the powerful, he was beaten so badly that he lay near death. In this desperate moment, the Eternal Literary Way System activates. Its mission targets the rot at the heart of the realm: dismantle the literary culture of empty talk that brings ruin to the country, and rebuild the imperial examination and bureaucracy around practical learning and effective governance.
With the System’s store of political, economic, and technological knowledge far beyond its time, as well as the ability to exchange “prestige points” for real-world resources, Lin Mo begins his rise. He first shows his talent by using ingenious mathematics to solve a problem at his father-in-law’s trading house. Then, at a gathering of literati, he presents the outline of his earth-shaking treatise, On Making the Nation Wealthy, stunning people across the land. But this also draws the hostility of the faction of upright scholars led by Grand Secretary Cui Wenyuan. They see Lin Mo as the source of the disorder threatening their “flourishing age of elegance,” and repeatedly frame him through literary intrigues.
Meanwhile, Lin Mo meets the reigning crown prince, Xiao Jingyan, who is traveling incognito. Xiao Jingyan loathes the court’s empty talk, but has little power of his own. Lin Mo’s practical philosophy and the vision of “The Exploitation of the Works of Nature” revealed by the System leave him astounded, and the two secretly form an alliance. At the palace examination, Lin Mo answers the emperor’s question, “What is essential to governing the realm?” with his essay, Ten Strategies for Strengthening the Nation Through Practical Learning. He takes aim at the eight-legged essay system and the culture of empty talk, grounding his argument in historical sources while cutting straight to the heart of the matter. His words cause an uproar among the court officials. In a debate before the emperor, Cui Wenyuan and other great scholars close in on him, but Lin Mo draws on the System for vast stores of data and historical examples, making every word a blade. In the end, he awakens an emperor who sincerely wants to govern well but has strayed down the wrong path, and the emperor abolishes the new system on the spot.
But this is only the beginning.
