Regent of Great Xia: Starting Out as a Driver at a Rural Commune

[Play the pig to eat the tiger + ruthless veteran + seize power and woo a wife + decisive and ruthless + multiple heroines + turn the tables]

Lu Chen, a border-army scout, is discharged after being wounded. The moment he gets home, he finds his former fiancée in the arms of a rich young master, trying to buy him off with a few scraps of silver. Desperate for a way forward, he swallows his pride and works as a lowly coachman at the county yamen. But the county magistrate sees him as "disabled and easy to bully" and forces him to marry his pregnant mistress as a scapegoat, hoping to squeeze the last bit of value out of him. The honest man is pushed to the edge of a cliff, only to bare fangs that devour without a trace! Lu Chen meekly agrees to the marriage on the surface, while secretly using the reconnaissance skills he learned on the battlefield to expose every detail of the magistrate's collusion with merchants. He not only shatters his former in-laws' backbone, but also makes the heartbroken magistrate's wife bow to him in a hidden chamber. The county magistrate is still plotting how to get rid of Lu Chen, only to discover moments later, in terror, that his wealth, power, and household have already fallen into the hands of this lame coachman! Lu Chen is inadvertently drawn into factional struggles in the prefecture and at court, using economic and military power to carve out a domain of his own. When chaos engulfs the realm or the throne changes hands, he rides the tide to the capital to purge the court of corrupt officials. In the end, he takes complete control of the Great Xia court, becoming a regent who wields power over all and establishing an interest group of his own.