[Transmigration + Industrial Revolution + political intrigue + revenge and face-slapping + advancement through the imperial examinations + wish fulfillment]
Yang Wenzhao opens his eyes to find himself the most notorious wastrel in Qingzhou City. He has five taels of silver, three hundred taels in debt, and a stepmother waiting for him to die.
In his previous life, he was a mechanical engineering master's graduate from a top-tier university. In this life, all he has left is a head full of engineering blueprints.
No matter. He digs into abandoned kilns, redesigns their flues, and makes cement. The Qingzhou prefectural government scrambles to place orders with him. He passes the county, prefectural, academy, provincial, metropolitan, and palace examinations, all the way to the emperor's court, where the emperor slips away the canal plan he has drawn. The top scorer joins the Ministry of Works, then becomes a minister and inspector overseeing Jiangnan.
From a good-for-nothing everyone cursed to the youngest regional governor in the Great Xia dynasty.
On the twelfth day of the sixth month, the Three Judicial Offices convene a joint trial. He slaps a hollow copper coin onto the table.
“Gentlemen, it's time to settle accounts.”
The reckoning brings down half the court and secures thirty years of peace.
A bully wants to seize the land? He gathers everyone in the village, builds a kiln in three months, and turns wasteland into fertile fields. The prefect submits a memorial to commend him.
An enemy wants him silenced? He unearths the ledger from his father's old case: three sets of secret accounts, a money-laundering chain running through three provinces, and a list of more than twenty shareholders. The secret hidden in a single copper coin points straight to Yan Shifan, the Grand Secretary of the court.
The people of Qingzhou call him a living Buddha. The powerful in Jinling call him a meddlesome nuisance. The capital's bigwigs watch him walk out of the Dali Temple, with a whole crowd kneeling behind him.
The twelfth day of the sixth month. A joint trial by the Three Judicial Offices.
He stands in court and slaps the copper coin onto the table. “Gentlemen, it's time to settle accounts.”
That reckoning brings down half the court; that reckoning secures thirty years of peace for Great Xia.
