March 12, 2026. Chengdu Metro, morning rush hour.
Zhu Qingming, an overworked office drone who had stayed up all night watching a game, dozed off. When he opened his eyes again, the world had turned upside down.
A city wall of packed earth, clothes of rough, tattered cloth, and a chipped bowl in his hand. He had landed straight in the fourth year of Chuping, early in the Eastern Han Dynasty.
He swore on the spot: "From the start, I've got nothing but a bowl. What am I, Zhu Chongba?"
Even crazier, he traveled to the late Han with his eyes closed and returned to the modern day when he opened them, stark naked both ways, without a stitch to his name.
One second he was begging in a time of chaos and hiding from soldiers, the next he was naked in a subway car, so humiliated he wound up reporting to a police station.
His only golden finger: survive for 48 hours in the late Han and he could draw a card. In the modern world, anything could be drawn. His beginner's reward was a can of fermented herring, which nearly stank him to death in the war-torn past.
After jumping back and forth, suffering repeated public humiliation, and nearly dying again and again, Zhu Qingming finally figured out the rules.
He recruited a history major friend, who had seen him vanish into thin air, as his strategist behind the scenes. In the modern world, he frantically crammed Three Kingdoms history and science and engineering knowledge. In the late Han, he played it safe, built up his strength, and used card draws to break out of his predicament.
He saved lives with anti-inflammatory medicine, fed the people with high-yield crops, strengthened his army with improved weapons, and avoided disasters by predicting events from history.
From a beggar on the streets to the lord of a fortified settlement, from ruling a small corner of the land to the power behind a three-way balance, he carved out a fourth power in the world of Cao, Liu, and Sun.
Others relied on Heaven's will to vie for supremacy. He crossed worlds by sleeping. Others relied on schemes to seize cities. He used knowledge to outclass them.
He swept away the fires of war, pacified the Central Plains, brought the warlords to heel, and unified the land. In the end, he united the realm, sailed across the seas, and became the ruler of Blue Star.
By day, he was the founding emperor who decided the fate of the realm in Luoyang. At night, he returned to his rented apartment in Chengdu to lie flat as an overworked office drone.
From the start, he had nothing but a bowl. In the end, the world was left in awe!
Generally speaking, if you find yourself traveling through time, most people will just stay at home and keep quiet. I feel like the author has exhibitionism