The Road to Success

After transmigrating into the only child of a merchant family, Jiang An has more money than he could ever spend in this lifetime.

He thought this was a reward for working so hard in his previous life in the modern world. Little did he know that his family had already been targeted.

In an era where scholars outrank farmers, artisans, and merchants, merchants are born at a disadvantage. To enjoy a better life doing as little as possible, Jiang An decides to start working hard...

But for now, he’s still a tiny baby. He can think about studying when he’s grown up!

*

After transmigrating as the youngest son of a merchant family, he assumed he would inherit the family business and follow in his father’s footsteps.

But the imperial court issues an order: the civil service exams are open to everyone!

Great, great! With the memories of his past life, a little civil service exam will be easy to handle!

After more than a decade of diligent study, he passes the imperial exams and earns an audience with the emperor.

Make powerful enemies? No problem! Get demoted? No problem!

Build roads, control floods, suppress the Japanese pirates...

With his accomplishments behind him, he’s back in the capital!

This is a fictional setting. Please don’t nitpick the historical details!

Blurb for the neighboring story, "Riding the Same Wind [Imperial Exams]":

Yu Wanzhou opens her eyes and finds that she has transmigrated.

She’s become the vicious female lead of a certain online novel, doomed to a tragic fate.

Thinking of the male lead, who took every advantage he could get from her and then turned around and blamed her,

Yu Wanzhou makes her decision: I’ll take the male lead’s path and leave him nowhere to go!

She’s going to take the civil service exams!

After countless trials, Yu Wanzhou finally reaches the palace examination.

That day, the Drum of Remonstrance, which had not been struck in a century, sounded without end. Yu Wanzhou was arrested and taken to the Court of Judicial Review on charges of cheating in the civil service exams.

The promising top candidate is suddenly thrown in prison, and she’s a woman! The court is in an uproar. The censor-in-chief springs into action, impeaching Yu Wanzhou as if she were unfit to be human.

Everyone thought that even if Yu Wanzhou survived, she’d come out of prison in tatters. But not only did she emerge unharmed, she also became the youngest top scorer in the dynasty’s history!

Her political enemies are so furious they spit blood. "Impossible! Absolutely impossible!"

Yu Wanzhou: "Everyone, as a trusted aide to the emperor, I can make anything possible."

The history books record: In the sixth year of Wending, the civil service examinations selected one hundred talents, filling the court with brilliant minds. The ruler and his ministers worked in harmony, ushering in an era of peace throughout the land.

When later historians study the "Wending Era of Good Governance," they always begin with an otherwise unremarkable night before the palace examination, when someone accused a fellow candidate of disguising herself as a man to cheat in the civil service exams...

Theme: Learning can change your fate