Great Fortune in the Ming Dynasty

A modern civil servant who had been coasting through life transmigrates to the prosperous middle Ming Dynasty. Unfortunately, he becomes a money-making tool for the imperial court and the emperor. For the health of the central treasury and the sustainable development of the Great Ming, he works hard to make money and spends it just as hard. In a feudal age, this kind of job is like walking a tightrope: one wrong step could cost him his life and his reputation. Yet strangely, throughout his life, this unofficial new-style bureaucrat and the emperor's investment adviser enjoys an excellent reputation. Fine clothes and fine horses, grand banquets and a life of ease. His superiors call him capable; the court and the people call him virtuous. Until... Until four hundred years later, a conscientious historian opens the long-sealed records. The moment the pages, yellowed by time, are turned, they reveal a great minister of a prosperous age whose seeming loyalty conceals treachery, and whose apparent clumsiness masks great cunning. He is extravagant and debauched, devious and deceitful, in league with the eunuchs and closely connected to upright scholar-officials. He curries favor in every direction, is all things to all people, and is thoroughly corrupt. The greatest traitor, biggest scoundrel, and foremost royal agent of the Jiajing era finally comes to light.