Trapped at Tumu Fortress, everyone else fights desperately for merit and a title, while Lin He focuses on saving money and caring for his family.
Every scheme is meant to protect himself and make a living, yet every deed becomes an act of benevolence that saves the world.
The more calculating and pragmatic he is, the more the people praise him as a sage for the ages!…
In the fourteenth year of the Zhengtong reign, yellow sand fills the skies over Tumu Fortress. Hundreds of thousands of Ming soldiers are trapped without water, and defeat is imminent.
Lin He, a security guard who had once fought his way through life in an orphanage, dies unexpectedly while moonlighting as a food delivery driver.
In a single moment, his soul travels back in time, and he becomes a low-ranking clerk from Shuntian Prefecture.
He is calculating and pragmatic, and all he wants from life is to earn money, support his family, and protect his parents and younger siblings. He carefully weighs every situation. He gathers defeated soldiers only to stay alive and avoid danger, improves the granaries so he can secure a supply of food, and organizes the city’s defenses simply to keep the capital safe and his family out of harm’s way.
But the world is full of strange twists: in the eyes of others, every selfish calculation he makes to protect himself looks like a selfless act of saintly virtue.
He survives the desperate siege at Tumu Fortress, earning the soldiers’ gratitude; reforms and reorganizes the capital’s granaries, winning praise from court officials; and stands firm to defend the capital, becoming a savior in the eyes of the people.
He had only hoped to keep himself safe amid the turmoil on the frontier and live a quiet, comfortable life. Before he knows it, the entire court and the people of the realm have raised him up as a saintly minister of the Ming dynasty. He commands a hidden force on the northern frontier and holds power over the whole court.
Lin He, complaining furiously to himself: I really just wanted to take care of my family and get on with my life!
Hello readers, I am the young author Yu Rong. Frankly speaking, I am also an ordinary person struggling to make a living, so I particularly wanted to write a down-to-earth protagonist. Lin He used to be a migrant worker who ran out of food in the sun. When he first time traveled, he just wanted to protect his family and live a stable life. The various strategies in the Tumu Fort were all means of survival when he was forced into a desperate situation. Every time he took risks, he complained in his mind that he had caused a lot of mess. Originally he just wanted to survive, but instead he accidentally saved a large number of defeated troops, gained a group of followers inexplicably, and passively started a counterattack. I avoid exaggerated cheating routines and focus on the calculations and entanglements of small people in the market. Selfish selfishness turns into righteous things, which is full of interesting contrast. The pursuit of soldiers outside and the secret plots in the army are coming one after another. Ordinary people bravely break through and rise. There are many exciting games in the follow-up. Everyone witnesses his comeback against the wind. Many friends asked me why the protagonist tried his best and refused to accept his fate. In his previous life, he was just a hard-working deliveryman. His life ended abruptly on a rainy night, and he left modern life unwilling to accomplish anything. Arriving at the crisis-ridden border gate of Tumubao, this former ordinary man desperately grabbed every ounce of hope. If you sympathize with the helplessness and stubbornness of the little guy at the bottom, you might as well follow him and make a comeback in a desperate situation.