Nanshan, a twenty-first-century outdoor adventure blogger, steps into an ancient tomb deep in the mountains and wakes up as the ruler of Zhen, a small country in the Eastern Sea.
He may be king, but no one in the entire city has enough to eat.
A Chu envoy lashes him across the face. “If you can't deliver three thousand able-bodied men and five thousand shi of grain within ten days, our army will be at your gates!”
His court is filled with kneeling ministers, all wailing in despair.
He touches the blood on his face and smiles.
I transmigrated once. I'm not here to live on my knees.
He has no System, no old master to guide him, just scraps of half-remembered knowledge from his former life as a poor student:
The curved-plow, the saddle and stirrups, a formula for gunpowder, the principles of the steam engine...
He remembers none of it completely, and every attempt is a gamble with his life.
But he wins his bets. The six kingdoms bow before him, the Xiongnu are driven to the ends of the grasslands, and Rome is crushed beneath his feet. In forty years, he transforms a tiny state into a vast empire spanning Europe and Asia.
Everyone thinks this is the end.
But on his deathbed, he draws a map and tells his son, “There are more lands to the east. Go find them. The people there are waiting for us.”
