Great Ming: A Run-Down County Town from the Start

After transmigrating to the late Ming, Zhu Tian becomes the impoverished magistrate of Yongning County. The entire county has only eight hundred starving people, and the yamen doesn’t even have a stick of firewood. But he understands materials science: he makes ceramics, soap, and glass, and gets Yongning prosperous in three months. He smelts steel, builds flintlock guns, and trains a new army, making the bandits tremble within half a year. The population surges, the territory expands, and the emperor is stunned when he visits in disguise. The crown prince becomes his student, while the Chongzhen Emperor both uses him and keeps him at arm’s length. Court intrigue, border wars, and the Industrial Revolution. How can one county magistrate turn the fate of a crumbling Ming dynasty?