The Art of Strategy: Thirty-Six Stratagems to Become Chief Minister

In the autumn of the twenty-fourth year of the Jiajing reign, the sun beat down on Shanyin County, Shaoxing Prefecture, like a red-hot iron. The drought-cracked fields were full of withered rice stalks, their scorched edges curling as the wind blew them to powder. Chen Yan woke with a searing pain in his throat. He snapped his eyes open, but instead of the familiar white walls of a hospital, he saw smoke-blackened wooden beams and an old cloth canopy hanging from them, speckled with mold.