If Zhang Jue Does Not Die, the Yellow Heaven Shall Rise

Lin Yan, a modern history master's student, wrote his thesis on the Way of Great Peace in the late Han dynasty. After an accident, he opened his eyes and found himself as Zhang Jue in the sixth year of the Guanghe era: twenty-five years old, with thirty-six districts and hundreds of thousands of followers. Only a few months remained before the Yellow Turban Rebellion, doomed to fail.

He remembered how the history books said it ended: Tang Zhou informed on them, the plot was exposed in Luoyang, Zhang Jue died of illness in camp, and the heads of the three brothers were hung in Ye City. Hundreds of thousands of Yellow Turbans were left to fill the trenches.

In this life, he would hit the brakes first.

Rather than launching a rebellion, he would begin by digging wells, making porridge, measuring fields, registering households, setting up public notices, and opening medical tents. In this chaotic age, he would take one person after another, each on the verge of starving to death, away from the blade of the old order.

But the old order refused to make way. Corrupt officials wanted his life, powerful local tyrants wanted his land, and the four-hundred-year-old Han dynasty wanted him to bow his head.

He had been a Daoist who wouldn't even kill a chicken. Until he understood that some people were born standing on the bones of the common folk, and they could neither be persuaded nor allowed to have their way.

Then he would stop trying to persuade them.

He put on his blue robes, held up a bowl of hot porridge, and calmly spoke to the collapsing dynasty:

Please, Han dynasty, go to your death.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual events or people is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.