The day Shen Yan dropped dead, his workstation still showed his fortieth unresolved bug.
When he woke up, the bug was gone. He had become the leader of 327 bandits.
The good news: their stronghold sits on a salt road linking north and south, with Dayong to the north and Jingchu and Shu to the south. The traffic is rich with goods and money. The bad news: the stockade walls leak, the account books are blank, their food will last seven days, and the brothers' only plan is to "head down the mountain and pull off a job."
Other people transmigrate and become bandit kings by living on the edge of a knife. Shen Yan becomes a bandit king by holding meetings.
Instead of robbing caravans, he negotiates "road section contracts." Instead of squeezing the people, he pays the whole stockade wages, keeps accounts, and sets up work shifts. Instead of charging headlong into battle, he posts sentries, repairs the walls, and cuts off supply routes. He treats the ramshackle mountain stronghold of three hundred men like a project on the verge of bankruptcy, rebuilding it line by line.
His plan is simple: less trouble, and a more comfortable life. But the further he goes, the stranger things get. Road tolls turn into taxes; protecting merchants grows into raising an army; road repairs reach the prefectural capital; and farming the land produces granaries full of grain.
What gives him an even bigger headache is that the number of "business partners" in this chaotic age keeps growing. Blacksmiths want to set up shops for him, old farmers want to grow buckwheat for him, and merchant houses in Sanjiaping compete to fly his Black Wind banner. Even the envoys and princesses sent by the great powers keep showing up with smiles. Few come to talk romance. They all want to discuss tariffs, post roads, and alliances.
In the end, everyone under heaven says, "Shen Yan of Black Wind has big ambitions."
Looking at the territories linked together on the map, Shen Yan slowly types one final question mark: "Wait, the client never said this was supposed to go live..."
