Reborn as a Fallen Scholar, He Abandons His Writing and Joins the Army to Fight for Hegemony

Shen An, a down-and-out scholar who failed in eighteen attempts, was reborn in the last years of his dynasty with regrets and a miserable life. Witnessing his neighbors being slaughtered by rogue bandits and his parents being brutally killed by swords, he tore up the sage's books and no longer hoped for a career in the imperial examination. Relying on the planning and layout skills he had learned from studying in his previous life, he befriended Zhao Shuo, the orphan of the frontier army, and gathered the displaced troops; the counselor Chen Xuan offered him the world's plans, the salt merchant Su Yao continuously delivered grain, grass and weapons, and Zhang Ye, the orphan of the previous dynasty, held the military talismans and hidden lines of the previous dynasty to assist him. Murong Lie, the tycoon of the north, and Wang Xun, the prefectural herdsman, each had heavy troops, colluded with foreigners, exploited the people, and made the people miserable in the troubled times. Shen started out as a small village school, robbed grain teams, seized county towns, and alienated various forces. With a piece of strategy and a remnant army, he gradually encroached on the territory of the princes. They pacified the refugees internally, rectified the official administration, blocked the cavalry externally, and opened up the waterway for transporting salt, thus supporting a stable and happy land in the midst of the war. In the past, everyone despised the poor and failed scholars, but they will eventually defeat all the separatist forces, point their swords at Luoyang, end the troubled times, and create a new dynasty belonging to the grassroots.