Chen Guanlan transmigrates to the fourth year of the Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty, becoming the impoverished son of a declining gentry family.
Other transmigrators rely on a System. He relies on his brain. The greatest intellect in a thousand years, he calculates military strategy, politics, and economics without a single misstep. His only flaw? He's too arrogant.
He enters the Hanlin Academy, clashes with Hu Weiyong, tutors the Crown Prince, reforms the salt administration, calculates the course of the Yellow River, and saves tens of thousands of lives. He resolves everything with a smile, as though the affairs of the world were no more than a game of chess.
But he refuses to accept that things must stay as they are. He insists on changing them.
In the twenty-fifth year of the Hongwu era, Crown Prince Zhu Biao is critically ill. Chen Guanlan watches over the medicine stove day and night, changes the prescription, replaces the imperial physician, and snatches the prince back from the King of Hell by sheer force.
Four years later, Zhu Biao still dies.
Chen Guanlan kneels outside the mourning hall all night. When he rises, he says, "I can still play this game again."
In the thirty-first year of the Hongwu era, Zhu Yuanzhang dies, Zhu Yunwen ascends the throne, and the Jingnan Rebellion looms. Chen Guanlan lays down his final hidden move, then drinks poison and meets his death with a smile.
Even in death, he never once says, "I regret it." The arrogant never admit defeat.
With a proud and unyielding spirit, he calculates every matter under Heaven; with half a ruined game of chess, he loses to the people of the past and the present.
The Ming Dynasty's greatest mad minister is understood only after his death.
