Soul Seal: Three Kingdoms

Introduction to The Three Kingdoms: The Hidden Agent

He had a very, very long dream.

In the dream, he drifted through a void for a very, very long time. He had come from nowhere and had nowhere to return to. All he had was a vague longing: to see the world of the living one more time.

Then he woke up. A mill, an earthen wall, a tattered quilt. Everything from the dream had vanished from his memory.

Only three things remained, buried deep in his soul: resilience, clarity, and empathy.

In Yangdi County, Yingchuan, Liu Fan is a miller's boy. At eight, he secretly listens in at the academy. At ten, he drives off local thugs with an axe. At twelve, his father dies, leaving him to run the family business alone. He doesn't know what makes him different from other people. He only knows that this dilapidated mill and this little county town aren't where he belongs for the rest of his life.

From Yingchuan to Luoyang, and from Luoyang to Xudu, he takes one step after another through an age of chaos. Zhong Yao is his mentor, Xun Yu is his fellow townsman, and Cao Cao is his lord. His sweat runs along the supply routes during the Battle of Guandu, and his blood flows through the mud as the army retreats in defeat from Chibi. He has seen the cleverest people of the age die, and the most powerful people stay alive.

His name appears nowhere in Records of the Three Kingdoms, and he has no biography in the Book of the Later Han.

But he lived. In an age of heroes, he lived as an ordinary man.

Three marks upon the soul, and the rise and fall of a chaotic age forgotten by official history.

He was no hero, but he lived.