1724: The Road to Fortune Starts in the South Seas

When he opens his eyes, it is the second year of the Yongzheng reign, and the back of a confiscation official’s blade is pounding on the door. In his previous life, he was a history student pulling all-nighters to revise papers. In this life, he is an orphan under the imperial ban on Christianity. His father left him only one instruction: Find Father DuPont. He follows the missionaries to Ayutthaya in Siam. There is no System, no interface, only rice prices, exchange rates, tax farming, shipping schedules, and human nature. He knows the maritime ban will be lifted in three years and Ayutthaya will fall in forty, but he keeps that to himself. He intends to get there first. From a church bookkeeper to the owner of his own trading house; from a single shipload of rice to an entire fleet. The Dutch, the Chaozhou merchants, the Church, the enforcers: no one can stop a man who knows how it all ends.