I Investigate the Archives in the Great Ming

Jiang Che, a PhD in historical bibliography, transmigrates to Fenghua, Zhejiang, in the nineteenth year of the Jiajing reign. His father has fled to escape his debts, a tyrannical grain-tax collector is at the door with his men, and the family's five mu of ancestral land is in grave danger. Other people get a System or a sign-in as their golden finger. His golden finger is the entire Ming Archives stored in his mind: he can search any documentary record he consulted before transmigrating. Others investigate cases through torture; he investigates them through the archives. He uncovers Wang Fu's background, the Wei family's fraudulent accounts, corruption in officialdom, and Yan Song's crimes. Starting with the stone bridge in Xikou Town, he investigates every secret of the Ming dynasty's two-hundred-year history, from a grain-tax collector's falsified accounts to embezzlement at court, and even the final sea chart Zheng He left behind in the deep ocean. In the end, his investigations make him the Ming dynasty's Grand Secretariat. This is the story of a PhD in historical bibliography who changes his fate by searching the archives during the Jiajing reign.