History books call him a traitor who sold out his country, a man who brought ruin to the nation and its people, a coward who quaked before the enemy.
But no one told Chen Mo what kind of terrifying, dysfunctional system awaited an imperial commissioner in 1840: the emperor wanted opium banned but refused to go to war, while the Ministry of Revenue had no military funds yet was expected to produce surprise troops. A veteran of modern-day public petition work transmigrates into the past, but this is no miraculous comeback story, and he refuses to dumb down history for dramatic effect. He uses tariff negotiations to secure breathing room on the question of sovereignty, then turns the comprador network into a means of infiltrating British merchants. He breaks down every treaty clause, loophole in the bureaucracy, and shift in imperial favor into a quantifiable contest of interests. This is no wish-fulfillment expedition, but an “extreme stress test” conducted in the cracks of officialdom. I am Qishan. I do not seek to turn the tide when all seems lost. I only want to carve out a window of breathing room for this nation from a deadlock in the evolution of its institutions!
The most amazing thing about this novel is that it seamlessly connects the two seemingly unrelated genres of "historical officialdom" and "science fiction suspense". At the beginning of the story, readers will think that this is just a cool novel in which the protagonist uses modern knowledge to "reduce dimensionality" in the officialdom of the late Qing Dynasty. However, with the emergence of the "shadow" organization, the story's plot suddenly escalated. "Shadows" are not ordinary foreign forces, but "observers" or "scavengers" who also have technology that transcends the times and can even intervene across dimensions. They regarded the late Qing Empire as a huge "social experiment field" and the protagonist was a "bug" that must be corrected. This setting instantly elevates the conflict of the story from the national level to the time and space level, and the sense of suspense and oppression also increases exponentially. Readers not only care about how the protagonist battles wits and courage with the British and Qingliu, but also how he fights against this incomprehensible enemy from a higher dimension. This bold attempt at genre fusion has greatly broadened the boundaries of historical time travel literature and brought an unprecedented reading experience.