Late Han: I Shape the World with My Memories

Lin Yan, a graduate student in modern history, passed out from exhaustion while poring over primary sources from Records of the Three Kingdoms late one night. When he awoke, he found himself in Julu Commandery, Jizhou, in the seventh year of the Guanghe era of the Eastern Han dynasty (184 CE), as a collateral member of a once-prominent but now impoverished local clan. The Yellow Turban Rebellion was about to erupt, and Julu, its heartland, was gripped by the turmoil before a storm.

Lin Yan had no supernatural abilities or future technology. His only advantage was his crystal-clear memory of how the Three Kingdoms era unfolded, the lives of its historical figures, and the details of its battles. From the major events of the Yellow Turban Rebellion to the unification of the realm under Jin, from the flaws in key figures’ characters to obscure details recorded in historical sources, everything was etched into his mind. But he soon discovered that history did not unfold exactly according to the “script.” His own actions and the changing balance of information were gradually sending the future off the course he remembered.