Reborn in the Wilds, Gathering Sparks to Make a Home

A new story is here! Come read my work on Tomato Novel. I hope you enjoy it. In the final years of the Great Yong Dynasty, natural disasters struck one after another, warlords rose across the land, and the realm plunged into decades of bloody conflict. In his previous life, Xiao Yi, a common-born young man, rose through the ranks on the strength of his military achievements, eventually unifying the realm and ascending the throne. Yet the benevolent policies he devoted his life to implementing, including equal land distribution, lighter taxes and labor duties, and the development of waterworks, stalled when they threatened the foundations of the great clans and his own powerful supporters. In his later years, his trusted general and favored consort betrayed him together, ending his life with a cup of poison. His lifelong ideals crumbled into nothing.

When he opened his eyes again, Xiao Yi had returned to twenty years earlier, to the moment when he had just been forced to join the rebel army and was struggling to survive. Memories of his previous life came flooding back, bringing with them not only his unfulfilled ambitions, but also the searing pain of betrayal and the suffering of the people. In this life, he would be naive no longer. With precise foresight into the course of history, he deftly avoided danger, secured his first fortune, and found the close friend and ally he had missed in his previous life: Lu Chen, a brilliant strategist with great ambitions of his own, held back by his humble origins. The two hit it off at once. Xiao Yi won Lu Chen over with knowledge beyond his time, and they swore brotherhood, pledging to end the chaos and build a peaceful, prosperous age in which the people could “stand tall.”