Transmigrating to the Western Han: I Cultivated the Wenjing Prosperity

Liu Xin opened his eyes and found himself the son of Liu Bang's elder brother, and the most wronged marquis in history: the Marquis of Gengjie.

The title was a cruel joke by Emperor Gaozu. Back when Liu Bang was still a nobody, his sister-in-law had scraped the pot clean and driven him away, humiliating him in front of everyone. After founding the empire, Liu Bang returned the pot to his sister-in-law's son: "Gengjie" meant scraping a pot. The whole world laughed for two generations.

Now things were even worse. Empress Lu had stripped him of his title, his steward had been bleeding his granaries dry, creditors were blocking the gates, and the marquis's estate was so poor it had to buy medicine on credit.

Fortunately, with doctorates in both agricultural science and economics, he looked around and realized:

People in this era didn't even know how to make compost.

People in this era couldn't even work out compound interest.

So he dug through the old accounts of his ruined estate and exposed the rats. He composted and selected seeds for three acres of barren land, saving the withered seedlings. With a system of "Guanzi's price-control techniques," he got the powerful to join him, brought grain merchants to heel, and gave three thousand displaced people land to farm.

Later, at the court in Chang'an, the assembled ministers couldn't answer the question, "Why is grain piled high in the granaries while the people still starve on the roads?" The pot-scraping marquis, mocked for two generations, stepped forward and spoke.

Decades later, the Grand Historian put it to paper: Under the Rule of Wen and Jing, grain turned red and the ropes binding the grain spoiled.

Liu Xin closed his ledger. That wasn't the Rule of Wen and Jing.

That was something he had brought about.