Han's Stratagem

The broken jade still held a trace of warmth in his palm, but the wind at Wuzhang Plains had already swept away the last wisp of incense offered in prayer.

Lin Heng remembered the fluorescent glow in the library, and how it had cast him into the body of a young Jia Xu.

In the shadows of Cao Cao’s camp, he had spun his web, making the flames at Red Cliffs burn even fiercer.

But the red-faced general’s pride burned Maicheng to the ground, and the light of the Crouching Dragon’s oil lamp finally went out before the northern campaign.

Those schemes people called “poisonous stratagems” were cracks he had spent the rest of his life trying to fill.

The remnants of the bamboo slips reflected old Jia Xu’s white hair. In the autumn wind came half a sigh: “I changed the plans, but I couldn’t change the ending.”

He became a footnote to history, an accomplice to regret.