King of Pi Island: I, Qi Tongwei, Won't Kneel Anymore

Chongzhen Year Two, Pi Island.

Mao Wenlong, commander-in-chief of the Dongjiang garrison, suffered a sudden heart attack and lay unconscious for three days. When he woke, the personal guards in his tent all felt their commander had changed. The once-boorish son of Liaodong now had eyes deep as an abyss and a mind as meticulous as a web.

No one knew that the soul in this body came from four hundred years in the future: Qi Tongwei, who had shot himself at Lone Eagle Ridge. In his previous life, he had knelt before power and fate until he had lost every shred of dignity. In this life, he would kneel to no one. He would make the world kneel to him.

From faking his death on the Twin Islands to escape his cage, to seizing Shandong amid the chaos; from snatching the fruits of victory in the Central Plains during the Jiashen upheaval to unifying the realm after ten years of bloody war; from isolating Japan to taking the islands of the South Seas, he used forensic-investigation techniques to build an intelligence network, his legal experience to reform government, and the tactics of business warfare to raise armies. Gao Xiaoqin calculated his provisions and pay down to the last grain, Hou Ping devised strategies to secure his dominion, Chen Haiyang monitored the realm for him, and Zheng Sen broke through the waves to the South Seas.

This is not a story about a loyal minister saving his country. It is the story of a man who died once and went to Heaven to claim victory in a game of chess that had been lost by just half a move.

“I lost at Lone Eagle Ridge. In this life, I’ll win the whole game.”