The Golden Palace Spy: A Courier’s Path as an Inspector in the Three Kingdoms

June rain poured down as if it meant to turn Shangling City's dirt roads into mud. Qiang Da'e squatted in a ruined temple beneath the city wall, staring at the worn-through soles of his cloth shoes and questioning his life for the Nth time. Three days ago, he had been entering tracking numbers on a computer at a courier station. Outside, the torrential rain of 2023 came with flashes of lightning and rolling thunder. He seemed to have tripped over something, and when he opened his eyes again, he was in this state: dressed in coarse, short clothes, gaunt and sallow, with half a piece of rock-hard wheat bread tucked against his chest and a wooden tag that read, "Refugee Qiang Da'e." "Qiang Da'e..." He murmured the name, the corner of his mouth twitching. In his previous life, his parents had named him "Qiangda" to save themselves the trouble, so his coworkers always called him "Qiang Da'e." He never expected to transmigrate and find that even his name still carried that inescapable courier-station vibe.