1895 Rebirth: I Became a Powerful Man in the Late Qing Dynasty

When he woke up, Gu Huaizhou, a top history professor, became a dandy landowner in the south of the Yangtze River in the 21st year of Guangxu's reign, whose family was in decline and heavily in debt! The "Treaty of Shimonoseki" had just been signed, with national humiliation at the forefront, huge debts, and wolves around - this landlord was literally walking on the edge of a knife! There is no system, no superpowers, just a history of the rise and fall of the late Qing Dynasty in his mind and a Machiavellian wisdom that spans a hundred years. Family fighting? Government blackmail? Strong annexation? Gangsters demanding lives? He smiled slightly: The specialty of history professors is to predict your predictions! Stocking up on food? No, what I am hoarding is information and connections about troubled times! Set up a factory? As the loom turns, it weaves the foundation of local power! Training as a private soldier? Where the muskets roared, what was fired was a force that should not be underestimated! In the post-apocalyptic chess game where the reform and conservatism are torn apart and the undercurrent of revolution surges, he becomes a chess player in the shadows: he makes friends with the reformers to bury the truth, takes advantage of the greed of the officials, frightens the gangsters, and even works with the tigers to deal with the compradors of the great powers. It only took Gu Huaizhou ten years to go from a "prodigal son" on the verge of bankruptcy to an "uncrowned king" who controlled trade routes, secretly commanded elite troops, and silenced the black and white factions. When the gunshot of 1911 was fired, the empire collapsed, and heroes from all sides competed in the Central Plains, people were shocked to realize: This Jiangnan landlord had already laid a shocking chess game! Is it a revolutionary revolution? Supporting soldiers and respecting themselves? Or... Carve his own order on this broken mountain and river? See how modern professors use history as a blade to carve out a path to heroism in the late Qing Dynasty!