No System, no transmigration. A nobody rises to prominence. No filler, no saintly protagonist, no dragging things out. The story is logical, and the protagonist doesn’t start by instantly crushing everything in sight. The early Qing-dynasty section is about building strength from the ground up, with some early thrills. The real excitement begins in the middle, during the Beiyang government era.
Also known as From Foot Soldier to Marshal
He is not a revolutionary, a royalist, or a reformist. He is an old-school soldier, a man who clawed his way up from the bottom, a young rascal who has “repay kindness with kindness” carved into his bones. He believes in “I’m good to those who are good to me,” and his line in the sand is “Don’t bully the Chinese.”
At eighteen, he was a dirt-poor farmer who never knew where his next meal would come from.
He gritted his teeth and enlisted.
Beiyang New Army, machine gunner, squad leader, battalion commander, garrison commissioner…
With every shot and every blade, he traded his life for rank.
Some said he was lucky. Others said he was ruthless.
He believed only one thing: in these chaotic times, guns are your parents.
From Tianjin to Shandong, from Shandong to Zhili, from Zhili to half of China.
He fought bandits, Boxers, warlords, and foreigners.
In the end, every warlord in the north had to call him “Marshal Zhang.”
But his eyes remained fixed on the highest seat of all:
Sooner or later, a man surnamed Zhang would sit there.
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