My name is Zhao Si. I’ve been alive for two thousand years. Not because I’m some big shot, but because I was so hungry back then that I stole and ate Qin Shi Huang’s elixir of immortality.
The moment I became young again, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. Then I saw the wanted poster: “This man stole and ate My immortal elixir. Capture him alive. I want him to spit it out.” Me: ??? You can spit this stuff out?
Over two thousand years, I’ve been hunted by the reincarnated Qin Shi Huang eighteen times. From the Qin and Han dynasties to the Ming and Qing, from bandits to constables, he found me in every life, driven by the same obsession. I ran for eighteen hundred years, and I just couldn’t run anymore.
In this life, he’s called Ying Zheng, a 996 programmer sharing a partitioned apartment with me outside Beijing’s Fifth Ring Road. By day, he’s an overworked wage slave driven to the brink by his product manager, spending half an hour researching food delivery coupons just to save five yuan. At night, he dreams he’s dressed in a black robe, standing on a high platform with civil and military officials kneeling before him. And every day, I worry he’ll suddenly push open the door and say, “Zhao Si, shall we settle the score over that elixir you stole?”
Things get even more complicated when an old man in a Tang suit shows up. “You think Ying Zheng is the only one chasing you? There’s Japan, the Dragon Veins, the Void Realm... The fate of Huaxia has been in decline for three hundred years, and it all rests on you.”
Liu Bang is delivering takeout, Xiang Yu is a personal trainer, Li Si is writing product requirements, and Meng Tian is working as a security guard. A whole cast of historical figures has been swept into a shocking game of strategy that will decide the fate of the nation. The glimmer of hope bought at the cost of the souls of the sixteen Ming emperors now rests with us.
