Late Han: I Started Out as a Village Official

Auditor Zhao Guoqiang transmigrates to the end of the Eastern Han dynasty and becomes an insignificant local official in Shouzhang County.

As soon as he arrives, he discovers that the original owner didn't slip and fall into the river. Someone pushed him in to silence him.

Why? While checking the books, he found that the county's tax grain accounts didn't add up. Three hundred and thirty shi of grain had vanished into thin air, hauled by cart in the middle of the night to a grain shop east of the city. The men collecting it wore Yellow Turban headwraps.

The Yellow Turban Rebellion will break out in half a month.

Other people who transmigrate to the Three Kingdoms make gunpowder, train elite troops, seize territory, and vie for supremacy. Zhao Guoqiang can't fight or smelt iron. All he can do is check the books.

But in these chaotic times, auditing is the toughest skill of all.

Starting out as a lowly local official, he counts chimneys to check household registers, uncovers hidden fields and falsified accounts, cuts off the Yellow Turbans' grain supply, and reforms the grain routes for the military farms. He insists on accounting for every grain shipment, and he can expose anyone's fraudulent books.

Cao Cao runs short of grain at Guandu and comes to him.

Zhuge Liang's northern campaign runs short of grain, and he comes to him too.

He doesn't want to be Cao Cao or Liu Bei. He just wants to be the man that whoever conquers the land has to visit in person and politely ask, "Chief Minister of Agriculture Zhao, could you spare us some grain?"

This is the story of a low-ranking official who, with nothing but a ledger, becomes the lifeline of the realm in an age of chaos.