Late Ming: Farming on the Frontier, from Foolish Soldier to Duke

P.S. If you don’t like the slow pace at the beginning, you can skip ahead.

One day, I transmigrate and become Li Rui, a foolish soldier whom everyone bullies at the border in the late Ming dynasty.

From the start, his superior frames him and sends him to the battlefield as cannon fodder, all to seize his last possession: a barren patch of land where not even birds would crap.

Everyone is waiting to laugh at this fool.

But they don’t know that beneath this dull, foolish exterior is a soul from the modern world!

You laugh at me for being stupid? I’ll grow potatoes and sweet potatoes, yielding three thousand jin per mu, and end famine across the entire frontier!

You bully me because I’m weak? I’ll forge refined steel and build repeating crossbows, making the Jurchen cavalry tremble at the sound of my name and cry for their mothers!

You think I’m cannon fodder? I’ll build bastioned forts of concrete, impregnable as a fortress, until the powerful at court have to beg me to defend the nation’s gates!

From a foolish soldier everyone could bully, to a marquis commanding a mighty army, and then to the Duke Who Pacifies the Nation, with power over the entire court.

When Li Rui stands clad in a qilin robe, a Xiuchun saber at his waist, surveying the realm...

Those who once abused and looked down on him are already kneeling at his feet, trembling.

Even the emperor, who once stood high above all, now has to ask with a smile:

"My dear Minister Li, do you find the realm... to your liking today?"