Reborn as Emperor Yang of Sui: Ruler of All Under Heaven

In 618 AD, a fire broke out in the eastern part of Jiangdu.

Pei Qiantong stood outside the palace and told Yang Guang it was only a fire in a hay storehouse.

Feng Shengyou knew, however, that the firelight heralded the Jiangdu coup. Within hours, Emperor Yang of Sui would be strangled with a silk sash, and the Great Sui would plunge irrevocably into chaos.

And at this very moment, he had become Yang Guang.

He had no System and no endless supply of modern technology. All he had was a fragmentary knowledge of history, a body surrounded by blades, and the title of emperor, which no one in the realm was willing to trust anymore.

If he wanted to survive, he first had to seize the palace gates. If he wanted to save the Sui, he also had to recover the false death edict that had already left the city, then face the new emperor installed in Luoyang, Li Mi with his stores of grain, Wang Shichong defending the city, Dou Jiande with popular support, and Li Shimin, who was even harder to defeat than the history books claimed.

But the realm did not rebel because Yang Guang was about to die. It had already lost faith after years of forced labor, famine, and three campaigns against Goguryeo.

So every victory first required him to repay an old debt. Every army he recruited had to be allowed to say no. With every step west, the supply lines, military orders, and people’s trust had to keep pace with his ambition.

From the bloody night in Jiangdu to the two emperors in Luoyang, from the contest for supremacy in the Central Plains to the snows of Liaodong, the steppes beyond the northern frontier, the trade routes through the Congling Mountains, the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean, and the battlefields of Persia, the banners of the Great Sui would eventually cross the straits and appear before the land walls of Constantinople.

But the true enemy Yang Guang had to overcome was never just the rival warlords and empires.

It was also the Yang Guang who might once again drag the world down behind him in his quest to reach the end.