I Came from the Eastern Han Dynasty

My name is Chen Yuan, and I was never meant to live this long. After a laboratory accident in 2024, I transmigrated into the body of the last disciple of a reclusive sage in the Eastern Han dynasty. I thought I would go home after I died, but then I discovered that whenever a body I inhabited died, my consciousness would randomly take over someone else who was about to die.

So I became Zhang Jue. I tried to escape my fate and change history through reform: I sent petitions to the court, sought out heroes of the future, and told them not to take the paths they would. No one listened. I watched tax collectors whip plague-stricken commoners to death, watched relief grain being hauled off to Luoyang, and watched a mother kneeling on the ground, kowtowing until her forehead bled. At last, I understood that no one could simply bow their head and endure this world. We raised yellow flags atop Julu’s walls not to become emperors, but to let the people know: Heaven is dead, but the people still live.

Later, I became Sima Hui and took a ten-year-old disciple named Sima Yi at Wolong Ridge. I became Zuo Ci and toyed with Cao Cao; I became Guan Lu and read Sima Zhao’s fortune; I became an anonymous old man who left a warning for Sima Yi when suspicion fell on him, raised a distant cup of wine to him during the Gaoping Tombs Incident, and finally met him one last time at his deathbed as an “old friend.” He asked me, “Teacher, do you regret teaching me?” I said, “I don’t. You are my best student.”

In 280, the three kingdoms united under Jin. At last, I returned to the modern world. Only 197 days had passed in the ICU. Yet I had watched everyone, my senior fellow disciples, students, and rivals, grow from youth into old age, and pass from life into death.

I came from the Eastern Han. I lived for two thousand years, only to tell you: those people