In the second year of Jianning, spring was very cold. In a dilapidated mountain temple on the outskirts of Zhuoxian County, Liu Yang opened his eyes suddenly. The biting cold penetrated into the seams of his bones along the thin linen clothes, making him shiver.
"Hey... Where is this?"
He rubbed his heavy temples and looked around. The cobweb-covered statue is tilted behind the altar, with half of its face collapsed, revealing the rotten wood stubble inside. There was cold mud beneath him, and some hay was spread on it, but it couldn't stop the chill that penetrated his heart. The air was filled with a musty smell and a faint scent of incense residue, which was completely different from the hospital he remembered with a strong smell of disinfectant.
"Didn't I work overtime in the laboratory and was sent to the hospital due to cardiac arrest?" Liu Yang frowned. The last picture in his mind was the panicked faces of his colleagues and the flashing emergency lights. Why did he end up in this damn place as soon as he opened his eyes?
He struggled to sit up, and then he realized that what he was wearing was not a hospital gown at all, but a short brown cloth that had been washed white and even had several patches. There was a hole in the trouser leg, and the exposed calf was a little red from the cold.
At this moment, a fragment of memory that did not belong to him suddenly poured into his mind——
"Liu Yang, whose courtesy name is Zi Heng, is from Zhuo County. He is seventeen years old. His parents died young and he makes a living by renting acres of land..."
"Today's saints are ignorant, eunuchs are in power, government is corrupt, and people are living in dire straits..."
"The giant deer spreads his horns and calls himself the 'great wise teacher'. He spreads the Tao of Taiping widely and has hundreds of thousands of followers. He declares that 'the sky is dead, Huang Tian will stand, and the world will be prosperous at the age of sixty years'..."
