[No System + Fast-Paced + Payback Whenever Possible...]
Zhang Shiliang is sent by the Trucking Emperor to the sixth year of the Tianqi reign at the end of the Ming dynasty, where he becomes the son of a small Guangdong landowner, a namesake who died drunk just after passing the lowest imperial exam!
With none of his predecessor's scholarly talent and knowing only that chaos is about to engulf the late Ming, he throws away the Confucian classics on the spot. The imperial exams? Even a dog wouldn't take them! He'll become a business magnate!
Armed with memories of countless short videos from his previous life, he makes soap, perfume, and a new kind of liquor. He had hoped to quietly make a fortune, but instead powerful landlords, the government, and eunuch faction lackeys join forces to steal his recipes!
Zhang Shiliang finally understands: in the chaos of the late Ming, there are no laws and no patents. Only power is the truth!
He immediately changes course: he pursues the imperial exams for status, builds up his resources through foreign trade, buys land in Xuwen, relocates people from Shaanxi, scours the Ming empire for its finest craftsmen, and recruits Bi Maokang to build guns and cannons!
He establishes the Patrol Office, the Night Division, the Navy Guard, the Arms Bureau, and more...
It's well written, nothing wrong with it. Zheng Zhilong was only recruited in the first year of Chongzhen. Some bugs will affect reading, so it is better to pay attention to and modify them.
Chapter 17: I was persuaded to quit. Although I knew it was a fantasy novel, but since I can do this, I might as well go straight to the modern era and make money to buy machine tools and generators to open a small workshop to produce arms in the Ming Dynasty.