Others transmigrate to the late Ming with complete knowledge of history, turning their fates around from the start.
Lin Yan transmigrates to the late Ming as a complete history novice, not even as knowledgeable as a low-ranking scholar.
With a PhD in Ming and Qing history from Peking University, he thought he had the whole story in hand and could do as he pleased in the Ming. But after just one lecture, a Ming scholar uses original sources to refute the "historical consensus" he had been citing, leaving him speechless.
Only then does he realize that the Ming history he has studied for over a decade is all falsified!
Others rely on foreknowledge after they transmigrate. He stumbles into pitfalls first, becoming the laughingstock of Jiangnan's scholars from the start. The fact that a PhD knows less than a scholar is now set in stone.
But no one knows that this transmigrator, who has to start learning the Four Books from scratch, understands better than anyone:
What catastrophe is about to befall the prosperous age before him; which grand ministers at court will later become traitors who sell out their country for glory; what wolfish ambitions lurk beyond the passes in the forests and mountains of the northeast; and what fantasies of slaying the dragon the Westerners who have crossed the oceans are entertaining.
He has no heaven-defying golden finger, but he has a heart that refuses to let China fall into ruin.
He will study the classics from the beginning, investigate the truth step by step, and quietly lay his plans.
The eunuch faction wants to seize power? First, cut off its arms!
The treacherous ministers want to sell out the country? First, take their heads!
The barbarians want to invade the passes? First, shatter their fangs!
The Westerners want to slay the dragon? First, make sure none of them get back alive!
In this life, he will show future generations that the Ming was never a rotten, doomed dynasty, that China never endured three centuries of decline, and that the Eastern dragon will always hold its head high in the East!
