A Doctoral Student in the Jiajing Era

Japanese raids ravage the southeastern coast, and corpses lie steeped in the brine of Quanzhou's tidal flats. In the north, Tatar cavalry batter the passes, while the garrisons along the Nine Frontiers lack proper clothing and have run out of food and fodder. At court, the Yan faction holds absolute power. The Jiajing Emperor hides away in the Western Park, refining pills in pursuit of immortality. The sea ban cuts off the people's means of survival, yet collusion between officials and merchants makes smuggling rampant. The so-called Japanese unrest was always the thunderclap heralding the empire's decline. And this year is the Ming Dynasty's last chance to save itself.

Yang Bo, a twenty-first-century PhD in Ming history, has just used GIS nautical charts to uncover the truth behind the raids during his dissertation defense. An accident sends him five hundred years into the past, where he becomes Lei Lü, a tenant farmer's son from Jinjiang, Quanzhou, who has eaten a poisonous mushroom and is on the verge of death. The historical knowledge and strategies he honed in his study must now earn him enough to stay alive: his family has nothing, the rent is extortionate, his elder brother vanished after joining the army, and his mute younger sister scrapes by selling firewood on the streets.

He has no protagonist's aura, only eyes that see through history. He boils seawater to transform salt production, gathering disaster refugees to build fortifications; he breaks the secret smuggling network and befriends allies to withstand the whirlpool of officialdom; he leads local volunteers, turning hoes into weapons and using the Mandarin Duck formation to strike Japanese pirates; he risks his life to break the sea ban, trading Quanzhou brine for goods from the South Seas, gathering grain to save the people and using the weak to defeat the strong.

The Yan faction plots against him, eunuchs demand bribes, and the Brocade Guard hunts him down. Every step is on the edge of a blade. He only wanted to keep his family safe, but fate pushes him onto the stage of history, taking him from tenant farmer on the tidal flats to the halls of government, where he gazes toward the untamed land of Formosa. This is no ordinary transmigration tale. It is the legend of a humble man defying fate to seize one last chance of survival for the faltering Ming Dynasty. Will you dare to join him in the game?