Zhuge Liang Became My Student, and I Told Him He Was One of My Students

Modern Three Kingdoms enthusiast Lin Yan opens his eyes and finds himself in Nanyang, three years before Zhuge Liang’s birth. He’s also bound to a Mentor and Talent Development System: by building up goodwill and winning the people’s support, he can exchange them for farming blueprints, medical skills, and even boosts to his students’ abilities.

When he first meets ten-year-old Zhuge Liang, the little prodigy declares, “A great man should aspire to rule the world.” Lin Yan pours cold water on his ambitions: “Learn to calculate a village’s grain supplies first. Then you can talk about the world.” From then on, a strange sight becomes familiar on the outskirts of Nanyang: the prodigy Zhuge Liang is made by “Teacher Lin” to squat on field ridges learning military farming, and to visit disaster zones to draft relief plans. Whenever he gets carried away, Lin Yan shoots him down for “talking strategy without practical experience.” Meanwhile, Lin Yan wins countless admirers by improving farming tools and fighting epidemics, quietly using his reputation points to shore up Zhuge Liang’s practical shortcomings and build him a network of connections.

When Liu Bei makes his famous three visits to the thatched cottage, Lin Yan even calls his student out in front of the imperial uncle: “He’s bright, but short on practical experience. If you want him, you must first ensure the people have enough to eat!” Who would have guessed that this “worst student” would later become the Sleeping Dragon who shaped the Three Kingdoms? And the seemingly strict Teacher Lin has long been using the people’s livelihood as his brush and the System as his ink to correct countless regrets of history amid the chaos of the Three Kingdoms. He doesn’t change the course of history that divides the realm into three, but he saves more people from being driven from their homes and helps Zhuge Liang’s strategies take root in reality.

As the autumn wind rises at Wuzhang Plains, Zhuge Liang smiles and sighs on his deathbed: “Master always said I was his worst student. But without you, there would be no Sleeping Dragon.” Looking out at the bountiful fields of Shu, Lin Yan says only, “I merely taught you one thing: what matters more than political schemes is putting food on the people’s tables.”