A history teacher at a middle school in Chengdu in 2026 suffered a sudden heart attack while teaching a lesson on the Tianjing Incident during the Taiping Rebellion. When he woke up, it was 1850, and he was in Jintian Village, with the identity of a newly enlisted “Sacred Soldier.” His mind held the complete historical timeline from the First Opium War to the Xinhai Revolution.
The very first thing he saw upon opening his eyes was a blade at his throat.
“Worship the Lord! Refuse, and you die!”
Lu Yuanming, who was now called Lu Chenzhou, looked at the burly man before him, his face covered in coarse stubble and his head wrapped in a red bandanna. Only one thought filled his mind: this wasn’t a dream.
Because it hurt.
The blade cut his skin, and blood ran down his neck and into his collar. He was forced to kneel, and someone shoved a coarse flatbread into his mouth. All around him, tens of thousands of people shouted, “Kill the demons! Kill the demons! Kill the demons!”
He looked down at his hands: rough, dark, and covered in calluses. They weren’t the hands of a thirty-five-year-old history teacher.
His last memory of the modern world was the slide projected in class: 1856, the Tianjing Incident, death toll: approximately 30,000 to 40,000.
He was in 1850 now.
