After Taking the Top Scholar's System, I Had No Choice but to Become His Dad

Fang Yiming, a chef at a three-Michelin-star restaurant, transmigrates into the body of a candidate in the imperial examinations, waiting in line to enter the exam hall.

The candidates ahead are being searched, stripped naked and groped from head to toe. With her turn about to come, she realizes she hasn't transmigrated into a man's body: she's a woman disguised as a man...

This is going to be the death of her!

Just as she's racking her brains to escape the exam hall, a System for producing imperial examination champions drops out of the sky and binds itself to her. If she fails to complete the task of passing the exams and becoming the top scorer, she'll be struck by lightning...

She had just thought she could breeze through the exams with the System's golden finger when it said: Wrong person!

Fang Yiming: Unbind me. I'm out. Thanks.

System: Can't. Whoever I bind has to do the task. If you can't become the top scorer, you'll have to complete the task of raising one. Based on past records, you can choose a promising young man, marry him, and nurture him into a top scholar.

Fang Yiming: Raise a top scholar "wolf"? Then he marries a princess and I get cast aside? No thanks. I'm not being anyone's tool!

System: Then what do you want to do?

Fang Yiming: Isn't the task to produce a top scorer? Easy. I don't need to marry him. I'll be his teacher and teach him your golden finger. Problem solved!

System: I suppose... that could work?

Fang Yiming: Heh. You want me to be the woman behind a successful man? Teach him, support him, push him to the top, and then quietly retire? No. I'm going to be his dad!

Male lead: Dad?

Fang Yiming: A teacher is a father for life. Come on, call me Dad!

Later

Male lead: I think this line in the Western language you taught me is great. It would be even better if we removed the last word.

Fang Yiming: Is that so? My dear father... My Dear...

Male lead: Yes, My Dear!

Reader's guide:

1. Plot-focused, with lots of eating, drinking, commentary, and nurturing a top scorer through the imperial exams.

2. Set in an alternate Later Tang, blending the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms era with the Song, Liao, and Jin dynasties. The systems and setting are all in service of the plot.

3. The author's notes are written on a whim. Feel free to skim them.

My upcoming novels:

"Top of the Imperial Roll"

A man who tills the fields at dawn may enter the emperor's court by dusk.

Making the imperial roll and riding through the streets in celebration is every scholar's dream.

But Su Mingke, who had placed among the top three in all three lower-level exams, fails the metropolitan exam. Accused of cheating, he is thrown into prison.

A great minister of the previous era becomes a wronged soul in a dark cell. Only after death does he learn that someone deliberately changed his fate.

Reborn and back in the past, he is already being held in prison and awaiting punishment. See how he sets things right this time,

puts his name back on the imperial roll, and rises to greatness once more.

(Male lead, imperial examinations, mystery-solving, career-focused.)

"Spring in the Imperial Capital": A historical romance with a female lead, focused on her career.

A new song, a cup of wine, and the springtime of the Imperial Capital beneath clear skies.

Her father dies in battle and her mother takes her own life. Disguised as a man, Qi Jiuniang flees to Jiangnan.

Starting with a roadside tea stall, she uses her family's brewing skills to build a tavern renowned for generations.

Who would have guessed that the dying boy she picked up on a whim would one day become emperor?

That impoverished scholar who was always trading poems for wine became the new top scorer?

Then surely it wouldn't be so surprising if the laborer who chopped wood and carried water became a great marshal, right?

A legendary tale of a little tavern in a troubled age.

Theme: Teaching and nurturing others. Knowledge is the power to change the world.