Zhuge Mingyu transmigrates into the body of Zhuge Liang's young attendant. He accompanies him as he farms in Nanyang and plans strategies in his thatched cottage, only to be dismissed by an order just before Liu Bei's third visit.
“The war is about to begin. I can't bear to see you put in danger.”
Zhuge Mingyu sneers inwardly. What danger? The “Burning of Xinye” plan is already in motion. As someone who knows too much, he has become a loose end that must be eliminated.
While fleeing, he is nearly beaten to death by starving refugees.
At the end of his rope, he stumbles upon Cao Cao and Xu Chu taking a walk beneath the moon.
He throws himself to the ground and cries out hoarsely, “Chancellor, save me!”
Xu Chu draws his sword, but Cao Cao narrows his eyes and studies him. “Who are you?”
“Someone who can save General Cao Ren's twenty thousand men.”
Zhuge Mingyu lifts his head and says each word clearly:
“Xinye is an empty city, and the streets are packed with sulfur and saltpeter. Zhuge Liang plans to use a great fire to destroy the elite troops in Cao's camp!”
Cao Cao's pupils contract.
An urgent dispatch races eight hundred li to Xinye, and Cao Ren narrowly escapes the flames.
The whole army is in an uproar, but Cao Cao invites Zhuge Mingyu into his command tent and personally serves him tea.
“Yixian, you truly are a gift from Heaven.”
From then on, Cao Cao's camp has a new strategist, the “Master Yixian,” whose plans never fail.
He prepares defenses in advance at Bowang Slope, anticipates the enemy's moves at Changban Slope, and turns the tide at the Battle of Red Cliffs by breaking the chain of linked ships...
While the Crouching Dragon borrows the east wind in Jiangdong, he calculates the exact moment the fire ships will arrive on the north bank.
The Crouching Dragon looks up at the sky and laments, “Why was Yixian born when Liang already lived?” Zhuge Mingyu only smiles calmly.
“Master Wolong, it isn't that you abandoned me. It's that this realm...”
“Is ready for a new ruler.”
