Bai Ze, a history student at Yudong University, is consumed by the desire to prevent the “Five Barbarians’ Upheaval.” Somehow, he transmigrates into Diaochan’s bedchamber. The beauty is dressing before her mirror, as her golden hairpin trembles in time with the bells of Tongque Terrace. This modern man, who has stumbled into the deadly maelstrom of the Three Kingdoms, has no idea that the Hero brand steel pen in his sleeve, the very thing that brought him here, has lain buried at the ruins of Ye City for a thousand years.
To protect Diaochan, Bai Ze gets caught up in the plot to assassinate Dong Zhuo. He shares wine with Cao Cao beneath the moon and becomes his sworn friend, teaching Cao Cao’s camp to build repeating crossbows with gears, using The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art to solve a grain crisis, and shaking the court with his prophecy that “the Sima clan will usurp the throne.” Yet the wheels of history crush every scheme: the sudden illness that strikes Cao Pi on his deathbed, the bizarre geomagnetic chaos during the Gaoping Tombs Incident, the bronze Nine Tripods that appear by the Luo River... It is as if an invisible hand is turning his plans into kindling for the birth of the Jin dynasty.
The spirit of Jian’an collides with quantum physics, while strange creatures of the mountains and seas roar alongside electromagnetic cavalry. When Bai Ze discovers his student ID engraved on the modern steel pen tucked into the pages of Records of the Three Kingdoms, and Sima Yan’s blade cuts off the last glimmer of hope, he finally realizes that he is the missing footnote in the history books. See how this dashing young man rewrites the Memorial on Sending the Troops on the autumn night when Zhuge Liang’s star falls over Wuzhang Plains, and joins hands with Da Qiao and Xiao Qiao to paint A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains as Tongque Terrace collapses. In the end, he retreats to the bamboo grove with the women he loves amid the chaos, burying a spark of civilization deep in the veins of the land, to last across a thousand years.
In this deadly game with the world at stake, the player has long been a piece on the board. Who says a time traveler cannot become history itself?
