The Qing soldiers had already raised their blades. Zhao Beichen knelt in the snow, hands bound behind his back and a rag stuffed in his mouth. The interpreter shouted beside him, “He’s the last survivor. Do we kill him?”
He spat out the rag and shouted a sentence in Manchu...
The blade stopped in midair.
He transmigrated into the body of a border soldier in the late Ming and became a captive of the Qing army. Fortunately, the four hundred years of history he had read weren’t for nothing.
He knew every faction within the Eight Banners, the conflict between Hong Taiji and Dorgon, and when the first snow of the year would fall.
He knew it all.
With this foreknowledge, he survived the blade and escaped the prisoner camp.
He made gunpowder, repaired firearms, and trained new troops.
When the Qing army laid siege to a city, he rode alone through their encirclement to seek reinforcements.
When the Qing army set an ambush, he turned the tables and raided their granary.
Some said he was a born general descended from the heavens.
Only he knew the truth: he simply remembered what the history books said.
