This Time, I'll Be Kongming

After dying the wrong death once, he went to the underworld and demanded compensation. The Three Kingdoms. Kongming. When he opened his eyes again, he really had become “Kongming.” Only his surname was Hu, not Zhuge. In the seventh year of Guanghe, Hu Zhao was seven years old. The Yellow Turbans were about to rise, and the realm was on the brink of chaos. He knew Cao Cao, Yuan Shao, and Liu Bei. He knew of Guandu and Red Cliffs, and of Sima Yi, who would one day reshape the realm. But knowing history did not mean he could survive it. A seven-year-old couldn’t lift a sack of grain, and no one would treat a child’s words as sound policy. The histories said Hu Zhao would live into his eighties, but they did not say how a child could make it through famine, warfare, recruitment, and the treachery of human nature to reach that day. At first, all he wanted was to survive. Later, he gained family, friends, and students, as well as people he could not bear to watch die. And the first time he changed what was supposed to happen, the history he knew began to grow unfamiliar. This time, he was not Zhuge Kongming. He could only be Hu Kongming.