“Lin Zhige, your family offended the Eight Great Houses. You'll be executed after the autumn harvest. Sign this letter breaking off our engagement, and I might leave your corpse intact.”
In the heavenly prison, his cold and haughty fiancée looks down on him, kicking him while he's down.
Lin Zhige gives a cold laugh and turns to look at the stunning jailer in the corner, dressed as a man.
“The Great Qian treasury is empty? Easy. I'll teach you to issue government bonds and fleece the great houses! The treasury will be flush in a year, and you'll pacify the realm in three!”
The jailer is none other than the Great Qian empress, who has nowhere else to turn. She is astonished by what she hears!
The next day, an imperial edict shocks the court.
Lin Zhige not only survives, but is appointed Minister of Revenue and ordered to embezzle and confiscate estates!
The court's officials denounce him as an ignorant, illiterate thief who is plundering the state. He casually rattles off three hundred Tang and Song poems and is honored as Great Qian's Literary Sage!
When the great houses join forces to resist him, he counters by introducing modern stock markets and futures, bankrupting the powerful nobles across the court. His former fiancée kneels in the snow, kowtowing and begging for mercy!
Just as everyone in the realm thinks Great Qian is doomed to fall into the hands of this “great traitor,” Lin Zhige uses the money he's earned to build rifles and cannons.
The Great Qian empress proclaims to the realm with commanding authority: “Anyone who impeaches my beloved Lin will have their entire clan executed! My beloved, shall I summon you to my bedchamber tonight?”
