The Late Han's Rise to Power

A modern engineering student dies while playing a Three Kingdoms game and transmigrates to the Eastern Han in the fifth year of Guanghe, 182 AD, becoming Liu Bian, a Han prince. In his previous life, Han princes had repeatedly died young. The imperial family superstitiously believed that palace spirits brought harm to children, so after Empress He gave birth to Liu Bian, she dared not raise him in the palace. Instead, she entrusted him to the Daoist priest Shi Zimiao, who lived outside Luoyang, hoping his esoteric arts would protect the boy from danger. Kept far from the imperial city from childhood, with no title to lend him status and no affection from the emperor, he was known to the world only as “Marquis Shi.” Few knew he was the eldest legitimate son of the Han emperor. Emperor Ling favored Liu Xie, the younger son raised by Empress Dowager Dong, and treated the eldest prince living outside the palace with cold indifference. The court and the people alike assumed that Liu Xie would inherit the throne. In the depths of the palace, warmth was scarce and imperial power heartless. Only his birth mother, Empress He, occasionally came to visit him. He had no one to rely on. The Han dynasty was on the brink of collapse. Eunuchs meddled in government, the imperial in-laws fought for power, the provinces were in disarray, and the Yellow Turban storm was gathering. The great upheaval was just around the corner. As an engineering prodigy from a later age who loved Three Kingdoms games, Liu Bian understood the century of upheaval that would engulf the late Han. He knew his fate: to be deposed and murdered, a sacrifice to the chaos. In this desperate situation, he kept a low profile in a Daoist temple as a child, using Empress He's name as a Daoist to build connections and drawing on his foresight to read the political currents and secretly amass strength. He played the He clan's in-laws against one another, maneuvered around the Ten Attendants, countered Empress Dowager Dong's faction, and deftly outmaneuvered his younger brother Liu Xie, rising against the odds from a corner no one cared about. When Emperor Ling died and the court fell into chaos, the deposed emperor who was supposed to perish would take the reins and enter the game. He would eliminate the eunuchs, quell internal strife, subdue the warlords, and secure the Han dynasty's rule, ending the chaos of the late Han and restoring the might of the four-hundred-year-old empire!