An incomplete ancient text sends Jiang Shu, a hydraulic engineer, back to Handan in Zhao in 247 BC.
In a narrow alley, he fights off several armed pursuers with his bare hands and rescues a frail boy covered in dirt. He asks the boy's name, and the answer is one he has read countless times in history books: Ying Zheng.
The System, "Strategies for the Realm," offers him a path: help the King of Qin strengthen his state. The stronger Qin becomes, the greater his cultivation. From the muddy construction site of the Zhengguo Canal to long talks in a side hall of Xianyang Palace, from teaching Fusu to secretly matching wits with Lü Buwei, he makes his way to the very heart of the Great Qin's political game.
On a rainy night at Shaqiu, Ying Zheng dies of illness. Jiang Shu uses a magical artifact to preserve the emperor's final soul, and from then on stays by the side of his old friend, who is no longer an emperor, as an equal.
After that come the realm's upheavals, the desperate battle at Julu, and the collapse of the empire. Now a land immortal, Jiang Shu stands at the edge of the ruins and does not intervene again. When someone asks why, he replies, "I did what I could. Leave the rest to those who come after."
One man's transmigration isn't about becoming a king or conquering the world. It's about standing in that narrow alley from two thousand years ago and saying to the boy, covered in dirt but standing tall, "I'll walk this road with you to the very end."
