Historical What-If + Transmigration into a Historical Book + Infrastructure and Farming + Courtroom Rivalries + Invincible Wish Fulfillment + Ruthless and Decisive + Comedic Contrast + Technology Builds the Nation + Imperial Examinations and Officialdom + Passionate and Inspiring
Shen Lie, a chief engineer in the modern salt industry, died suddenly and transmigrated into a ninth-rank saltworks inspector, exiled to the bitter salt flats of Heishui in the Great Yong dynasty.
From the start, the northern desert army had withdrawn, and the saltworks' twenty-three elderly and infirm workers were chewing tree bark as they waited to die! Steward Hu from the county yamen took the last half-barrel of fresh water and demanded five hundred jin of refined salt by sundown, or he would have them all tied up and thrown into the city moat to fill it!
Cornered, Shen Lie rolled up the sleeves of his tattered official robe and sneered.
Others spent three days and nights boiling toxic, yellow-stained salt. He spread river sand and packed in charcoal, filtering five hundred jin of snow-white tribute salt in half a day!
Corrupt officials stealing the food that would save their lives? He smashed a dog's leg with a forty-jin wrought-iron crowbar in broad daylight!
The registrar cuts off their firewood and water? He makes white jade tofu from bitter brine, sets up a double-line gravity-fed bamboo chute, and refines mirabilite into ice without fire, even grinding the byproduct saltpeter into black powder!
Faced with a meal boy wearing a yellow prison uniform, Shen Lie slammed the table and shouted, "This insults the dignity of the court! Even if I starve to death..."
The next moment, he mixed snowflake salt into eggplant cooked in lard and wolfed it down from a bowl. "It's delicious! Bring me three more bowls!"
With the Great Yong Code in his left hand, he overturns corrupt officials' cases. With scalding bitter brine in his right, he forces vicious underlings to their knees!
His partner, Su Qinghe, holds a purple sandalwood abacus and can calculate every salt permit in the empire. Working together, their eyes meet, and the Hedong clans' salt fields collapse overnight!
When the Cui clan and two hundred thousand northern desert cavalrymen surround the city, Shen Lie stands atop Salt Platform Number Five, with three hundred bronze cannons behind him aimed at the heavens.
"Under the Great Yong Code, those who invade our lands or steal military salt will be executed! Who's for it, and who's against it?"
