The Lone Star of the Northern Desert: Huo Qubing

Year Four of the Yuanshou Era, the northern deserts.

A traditional Chinese medicine doctor from the twenty-first century wakes at the foot of the Qilian Mountains. His name is Chen Man, and all he has is a first-aid kit and a white coat washed until it has faded.

He has no idea how he came here. He only knows that in two years, the young general who was made a marquis at seventeen and conquered Langjuxu at twenty-one will die in the prime of his life. The history books will record his death in five cold words: “Died in Year Six of Yuanshou.”

And now, that young man is standing right in front of him.

Chen Man thinks he is only a bystander. He thinks that if he saves the bodyguard who fell from his horse and treats the wounded soldiers, he can live out his days in peace. He does not know that the moment he enters the Champion Marquis’s tent and faces the young general, barely clinging to life on his sickbed, and says, “If I cannot cure the general, I will pay with my life,” his own fate is bound to this era.

He saves Huo Qubing. Once, twice, three times.

He thinks he is saving lives, never realizing he is being drawn into an invisible web: the Grand Physician’s probing questions, the undercurrents at court, the emperor’s suspicions, and a man returned from the Western Regions who opens a door to another world for him.

And when Li Gan’s body is found outside the city, when the words “witchcraft and gu” begin circulating through the palace, and when the person he trusts most kneels outside the Xuanshi Hall, offering all his military honors and noble titles in exchange for Chen Man’s life, only then does Chen Man understand that he did not come to this era just to save people.

He came for a bond of loyalty, and so that a solitary star would never be alone again.