The low-key prince summons trainees from the Imperial Household Department at the start of the game.

When Shangguan Jin Hong opened her eyes, what she tasted was not the warm Longjing tea from her previous life, but the salty, fishy river wind.

He lay on a hard, communal bed, with low wooden beams overhead and the sounds of water, people, and boatmen's chants filling the air.

The air was filled with the mixed smells of sweat, salted fish, tung oil, and mud.

He was all too familiar with that smell.

Before he built the Money Gang from scratch in his previous life, he spent his days struggling on the docks, and this was the smell he encountered.

He sat up and found himself dressed in a coarse cloth short brown outfit, his hands rough and strong, his palms and knuckles covered with thick calluses.

This is not the body that cultivated internal energy for decades in my previous life, but a young, strong body with mediocre cultivation.

Just as he was about to circulate his internal energy to examine the condition of the body, a golden light suddenly exploded in his mind.

It was a feeling that couldn't be described in words.

It is not sound, nor image, but an infusion of information directly imprinted deep within the soul.

He saw his past life, the rise and fall of the Money Gang, the piles of white bones under the Dragon and Phoenix Rings, and the final scene of his defeat in the battle with the Heavenly Mystery Elder.

He also saw the person he would be loyal to in this life.

An eight-year-old child, Zhou Xing, the ninth prince of the Great Zhou Dynasty.

He also saw the presence of other "time travelers": Zhao Gao, Xu Chu, Yi Dun, Yao Guangxiao, Wang Anshi, Su Shi, Lu Changfeng, ...

Each name was accompanied by a brief message, enough for him to understand the origins and abilities of these individuals.

After the information was fed in, Shangguan Jin Hong sat on the dormitory bed for a long time.

The sounds of people on the dock outside gradually became clearer: a boat captain was shouting to unload cargo, a porter was cursing, and an accountant was shouting out numbers.

These sounds mingled together, like a pot of boiling porridge, but they calmed him down.

Fairy!

This is the only way he can understand the being that instilled the information in him.

The immortals chose him, Shangguan Jin Hong, along with heroes from different worlds. Everyone had only one goal: to assist the Ninth Prince.

In his previous life, he was the leader of a gang. He built the Money Gang, a powerful force in the martial arts world, from scratch. In terms of leadership, management, and martial arts, he never thought he was inferior to anyone else.

The immortal rated him six stars, as did the generals Xu Chu and Dian Wei, and the three scholars.

He, Shangguan Jin Hong, absolutely could not lose to anyone in front of his master.

In his previous life, he rose from a dockworker to the leader of the Money Gang. In this life, the immortals put him and his brothers back on the dock.

I'm not trying to belittle him.

It is him.

The dock was his most familiar battlefield, and also the place where he could best prove his worth.

He pushed open the door and walked out of the work shed.

Before us lies the busiest stretch of riverbank at Tongzhou Wharf, with over a dozen cargo ships lined up in a row, and porters scurrying back and forth between the gangplank and the warehouse like ants.

His brothers were the most elite members of the Money Gang in his previous life.

They are now scattered among the crowd, some carrying bags, some counting them, and some haggling with the boatman.

They all carried memories of their past lives and knew why they were here. At this moment, they appeared to be working, but in reality, everyone's eyes kept glancing at him, waiting for his orders.

He nodded slightly and whispered an instruction.

Before long, the news spread like ripples through the crowd.

Boss Shangguan was going to gather his brothers at a tea stall by the dock to discuss matters.

The workers gradually gathered around, some leaning against the pillars of the tea stall, some squatting on the stone piers by the riverbank, and some pretending to wait in line for tea.

These people were his old brothers who had followed him through thick and thin in the martial arts world in his previous life, and he knew each of them inside and out.

Without exchanging pleasantries, he went straight to the point: "Everyone knows about the immortals."

"Among our hundred or so brothers, we are not as talented in martial arts as those military generals in front of the emperor, not as good as those three scholars in terms of literary talent and strategy, and not as good as those managers in the money exchange in terms of how to make money."

"But the fact that our master arranged for us to be at this dock means that he has handed over this small piece of land in Tongzhou to us."

"What is a dock? It is the throat of the canal transport."

"More than 70% of the goods in the capital pass under our feet. Merchants, officials, and江湖人 (jianghu people) traveling from the south to the north all have to stop under our noses. That's our capital."

He pulled a piece of coarse paper from his pocket.

That was a rough sketch of the dock that he had just drawn in the work shed.

The map shows the territories of nearby gangs, the jurisdiction of the government docks, and the berthing locations of several major cargo ships.

He spread the paper on the table and pointed to several marked locations on the map with his finger: "The master already has a beggar gang in his hands, squatting in the streets and alleys to inquire about information."

"But they can't do what we can do: what goods come from where and where they go, which merchants are stockpiling what supplies, and which government's official ships have been coming frequently lately."

"These messages aren't on the streets, they're on shipping manifests, in ship holds, and on the backs of porters."

"From now on, every shipment in our territory will be reviewed, every dock gang will establish rules, and every shipment, from its origin to its destination, will be registered."

He put away the blueprints, his gaze sweeping over every face present, and slowly uttered his final conclusion: "The master has many pawns in his hands, some in the palace, some in the army, some in the business world, and some in the literary world."

"But in the martial world, we are the only masters. What we need to do is not to wait for the master to assign us tasks, but to let the master know that Shangguan Jin Hong and his brothers have held up the Tongzhou Wharf for him."

The tea at the tea stall had gone cold and no one was drinking it. All the brothers' eyes were on him, and those looks were exactly the same as he remembered.

In his past life, the Money Gang was so powerful that no matter how big the storm, they would dare to brave mountains of knives and seas of fire with just a word from him.

In this life, one can start over and gradually improve one's cultivation, but what is etched into one's bones cannot be erased by an immortal.

In the following days, Shangguan Jin Hong did several things.

He first divided his brothers into three shifts: one shift worked as a regular porter to earn money to support their families, while the other shift made connections with various forces at the docks and investigated the backgrounds of all sorts of powerful figures in Tongzhou.

He personally led the class to resume martial arts training.

When the immortals descended, they implanted the same martial arts techniques as those from their previous lives into everyone. The purely physical labor of carrying and unloading packages became the perfect cover for physical training.

He then formulated a set of organizational rules in the name of "mutual assistance among workers": all porters who joined the workers' association would take on business in a unified manner, distribute wages in a unified manner, and deal with the oppression and deductions on the dock in a unified manner.

To outsiders, he only said one thing to the various factions at the docks: "We are all hardworking laborers, sticking together for warmth, not causing trouble, but not afraid of trouble either."

This statement quickly spread throughout the Tongzhou Wharf.

Some people scoffed, while others watched coldly.

But more and more porters began to quietly inquire about how to join this workers' association.

Because those who join do indeed earn more and suffer less bullying.

The name Shangguan Jin Hong began to circulate among the crowd at Tongzhou Wharf. Some people were in awe of him, some were wary of him, and many more were just watching.

He then presented the first batch of valuable intelligence: the cargo throughput of several major shipping companies, the power distribution of several gangs, and the background of several key dock officials.

In a highly secretive manner, through the Beggars' Gang's informants planted by Lu Changfeng at the docks, he was sent to the palace.