We present an approach to compute time-optimal control of a quantum system which combines quantum brachistochrone and Lax pair techniques and enables efficient investigation of large-scale quantum systems. We illustrate our method by finding the quantum speed limit for a single-particle excitation in a nearest-neighbor-coupled qubit lattice with switchable couplings and fixed sum of their squares. We obtain the solution for a finite system with up to 10 000 qubits and for the effectively infinite lattice closed into ring. As another application of our method, we analytically derive the quantum speed limit and optimal transfer protocol for a lattice with time-independent couplings.