The Ashes of Four Generations at the End of the Han Dynasty

A modern history enthusiast transmigrates into the body of the young Yuan Shao. The Ten Attendants wreak havoc at court, leaving the people destitute. Zhang Jiao, Celestial Master of the Way of Great Peace, treats the sick with talisman water. Over the course of more than a decade, his followers spread across eight provinces, including Qing, Xu, You, and Ji, and hundreds of thousands of impoverished people rally to him. In the Year of the Sexagenary Cycle, they rise against the Han, and the Yellow Turban Rebellion erupts. Grand General He Jin orders the rebellion put down. The Han dynasty, like a great building battered by wind and rain, teeters on the brink of collapse. Backed by the immense legacy of a clan that had produced three dukes across four generations, Yuan Shao knows the full outcome of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the eunuch crisis, Dong Zhuo's entry into the capital, and his own defeat at Guandu. He does everything in his power to change the course of events. He leads troops to crush the Yellow Turbans, urges He Jin to reconsider, does all he can to stop him from summoning outside forces into the capital, and begins recruiting strategists and training private troops ahead of time, avoiding the fatal mistakes he knows from history at every turn. But fate has its own designs. The conflict among the aristocratic clans, eunuchs, and imperial relatives has become irreconcilable, and one unexpected event follows another. All his plans can do is delay disaster; they cannot change the larger course of events. He Jin still meets a violent end, Dong Zhuo still marches into Luoyang, and the warlords still carve up the realm as foretold. Knowing that defeat lies ahead, he can only struggle and scheme within the current of history, fighting in an age of chaos to secure a different path to survival for the Yuan clan.