The Coward's Guide To Imperial Greatness

He mastered every game. She wasn't playing one Lin Hao woke up dead — in a coffin, at his own funeral, in the year 1599. The AI in his skull was running at 30% and the Ming Dynasty's most punishing exam was four days away. His only advantages: a dating-sim brain that read people like game characters, and an artificial mind that could access twelve centuries of knowledge but couldn't write a decent poem. He passed the exam in a dead man's name. Placed first. Mapped every faction in a court that eats scholars alive — until Crown Princess Zhu Mingzhu sent him a two-character note after a single evening: 假的. Fake. She saw through every layer. No one had ever done that. She fights five wars before breakfast and drinks her tea bitter. He's a fraud running on borrowed time. Neither planned on the slow, terrifying realization that the only winning move is to stop playing.