Historical transmigration, military industry, farming, decisive and ruthless, no System
He transmigrated into the body of a condemned prisoner, scheduled for execution in three days.
Shen Yanzhi didn't wait for anyone to rescue him. He cured a jailer's lame leg, overturned his case with papermaking, then turned the tables and sent the enemy who had framed him to prison. A condemned man became a company commander. On the day he took up his post, the storehouse was empty, the soldiers were starving, and his superiors were waiting for gifts.
He gave them everything they wanted. He paid the required courtesies and smiled when he had to. His colleagues called him a coward; his superiors said he knew how to behave. He just smiled and nodded. Yes, yes, you're all absolutely right. Behind the scenes, he turned the empty storehouses and starving troops around, quietly building up his resources through military manufacturing and farming.
Three months later, three thousand Mongol cavalrymen swept toward the border. Shen Yanzhi led three hundred men out of the city. At a range of eighty paces, they fired a single volley. Before the Mongols even reached their lines, three ranks had fallen. They won the battle, inflicting sixteen casualties for every one of their own.
Only then did his colleagues remember: the man smiled when accepting gifts, but he had never gone easy on the troops during training. He had improved the gunpowder and flintlocks, drilled formations, and left nothing undone.
Someone in the capital grew uneasy. Four attacks awaited him in court: account books, false testimony, an exploding gun, and intercepted letters. He smiled as he entered the courtroom, smiled as he countered each move, and smiled as he slapped the evidence down on the table, piece by piece.
That very night, his enemy was found hanging from a beam.
The next day, someone asked him, “You're a condemned prisoner. Where did you get the nerve?”
Wiping down his gun barrel, Shen Yanzhi didn't even look up.
“They think I'm an honest man.
They'll have to learn the hard way that when an honest man turns on you, he leaves you no way out.”
[In a nutshell] Take the gifts, do nothing; turn on people without a second thought. Whoever comes after me dies.
