The Northern King of Great Xia: Unification

Chen Ye, a ninety-year-old PhD, wakes up in the body of a low-ranking clerk in the most remote county of Great Xia, Qingshi County. The county magistrate has fled, refugees are rioting, and the yamen runners have deserted, leaving twenty thousand people on the brink of starvation. Chen Ye doesn't seek power; he just wants to feed the people—building roads, burning lime, and opening salt kilns to help the locals earn a living. But developing a poor county requires money. The prefectural judge demands bribes, the wealthy merchants in the east monopolize stone materials, and neighboring counties sabotage out of jealousy. Chen Ye, with his abacus and ledgers, turns every scheme into a business: selling lime to the prefecture, expanding salt shops to neighboring counties, leading caravans out of the mountains, and spreading banknotes to every household. The richer he gets, the richer Qingshi County becomes; the more he earns, the more the people trust him. Money is both his confidence and his target. The day Qingshi County becomes wealthy, the court, the gentry, and neighboring countries all set their sights on him. Some call him a living god of wealth, others a living target. But Chen Ye believes only one thing: without a trump card, you can't even protect those you want to guard. From a single firearm to an ironclad ship, from a trade route to a telegraph network, he turns a poor county into a pearl beyond the Great Wall and a single business into a game of chess for the world. Unification was never his ambition; it was this world that forced him, step by step, to that position. — Description from novelcodex.org