Echoes of the Apocalypse: Starting by Teaching the Emperor Carpentry

In the forty-sixth year of the Wanli reign, Shen Mo opens his eyes and finds himself a poor carpenter in Ciching Palace, framed for eighty taels and due to be shackled and exiled to the border within five days. A master's in materials science, owner of a rosewood business, and a man who was driven to his death in his previous life by thirty million in debt: would someone like him accept the blame? No. Annan wood passed off as Hainan rosewood: he touches it, smells it, weighs it, and exposes the twenty-percent price difference on the spot. A single altered materials requisition form leads him to uncover a shocking hole in Guanghui Warehouse, where silver is swallowed and blood is spilled. The Embroidered Uniform Guard, the Directorate of Palace Eunuchs, the Ministry of Works, and the Ministry of Revenue all bring pressure to bear. He counters with one stroke: "Audit the accounts, not the factions," and posts the embezzlement ledger on the palace wall. And the half-grown boy hiding in the Eastern Palace, whom everyone treats as if he weren't there, timidly calls out to him: "Master Shen." That boy is Zhu Youxiao, the future Tianqi Emperor, known as the Carpenter Emperor. He teaches him to snap a chalk line, and that "there must be a line in one's heart." He teaches him to fit a joint, and that "leave a little room, and the object will last longer." He isn't merely teaching an emperor woodworking. He's teaching a boy who has hidden himself inside wood how to understand the order of the world, how to be a person, and how to make sense of an empire on the verge of collapse through a piece of furniture. The empire is on the brink, and the iron hoofbeats at Sarhu draw ever closer. The plane in Shen Mo's hands can mend wood and mend lives, and pass down a craft as a book that will endure for four hundred years. The surviving fragment of that book from the original timeline: he read it for half his life. Its author was, astonishingly, himself. [Late Ming transmigration | Wits and investigations | Political intrigue | Building up family and country | Intangible heritage: Ming-style furniture | Inheritance | Redemption across two timelines | No System, no golden finger]