Livestreaming the First Emperor with Spoilers

The rusty iron door banged loudly under the blows, sending dust drifting down. The air in the cramped rental room was stifling, like a steamer. Jiang Yi sat on a plastic stool with only three steady legs, staring at the numbers on his phone screen. Balance: 250.00. The roar outside pierced the thin wooden door and stabbed at his eardrums.

“Jiang Yi! Quit pretending you’re dead! I know you’re in there!”

“This whole neighborhood is full of people waiting for demolition, and you’re the only one making trouble! Pay your rent, or I’ll throw all those lousy books of yours out and burn them!”

The man was middle-aged, with a face full of coarse, swollen flesh: Landlord Wang.

Jiang Yi turned off his phone screen, his knuckles whitening as he clenched his hands. He was a top student in the history department, but he graduated straight into unemployment. In this fast-paced age, nobody cared what people ate two thousand years ago, and nobody had time to care about the extraordinary talents of the Qin Emperor or Emperor Wu of Han.