I’m Doing Everything to Ruin the Country, So How Did the Great Ming Become an Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets?

Transmigrated into the body of the cultivation-obsessed Jiajing Emperor, who never attended court, I bound myself to the [Countdown to the Fall of the Nation System].

The System told me: The day the Great Ming falls will be the day I return to the modern world with trillions in wealth.

So I began a mad campaign to ruin the country:

[Embezzle one hundred thousand taels to build a palace?] I made the Yan faction, the upright officials, and the eunuchs compete for the contract. They fought like dogs, and all the silver ended up in my private treasury.

[Wreck three hundred thousand taels in military funds?] I sent a trusted eunuch to supervise the army, but in his greed for a bigger cut, he “invented” compressed rations. The Qi family army ate its fill and marched all the way to Lake Baikal.

[Put treacherous ministers in power and throw the court into chaos?] I locked Hai Rui, the man who cursed me the most, in the Imperial Prison and secretly slipped him a copy of The Wealth of Nations. After his release, he became my most zealous architect of reform, working the corrupt officials throughout the court to death.

All I wanted was to quietly ruin the country and save enough money to go home.

Then the Tatar army reached the city walls. I opened the System Shop and stared at the plans for ironclad ships weighing tens of thousands of tons, purchased with the money I had embezzled. I fell into deep thought.

“Your Majesty!” The entire court knelt and begged through their tears. “How is this ruining the country? You’re giving the Great Ming cheat codes!”

“Please stop ‘tarnishing your own reputation’! There won’t be enough left in the world for you to ruin!”