Chapter 001

In the sixth year of Guanghe, there was a summer drought, followed by a poor autumn harvest, and then a severe winter.

In the regions of Beihai and Donglai, wells froze with ice over a foot thick.

In the second month of the seventh year of Guanghe, the Yellow Turban Rebellion erupted.

Qiao Yan gradually became aware of murmuring voices, slowly pulling her out of unconsciousness.

At first, she only heard fragments of conversation, something about “if the plague returns, we should dispose of it early.”

Then came the chanting of slogans fading into the distance.

The slogans were muffled and mixed, but she could vaguely make out,

“The blue sky is dead, the yellow sky will rise”

and

“In the Year of Jiazi, the world will be fortunate.”

But even these two sentences were frightening enough!

Qiao Yan jolted awake suddenly, fully alert.

A nauseating smell of blood and decay, mixed with the scent of dust, assaulted her senses, making her cough involuntarily.

But as her vision cleared and she surveyed her surroundings, she realized that the smell was not the primary concern at the moment.

She was lying on a barren mound near a dried-up marsh.

Where there should have been some vegetation, there was now only sand and… bodies.

It wasn’t yet summer, so these people had only been dead for a day or two, their faces not yet decomposed beyond recognition.

The closest body to her was emaciated, dehydrated, with a swollen face—a clear sign of death by starvation.

And it wasn’t just one person!

Qiao Yan propped herself up, looking around at the sea of corpses, nearly making her sick.

But her stomach, empty for days, had nothing to expel but a sour liquid rising in her throat.

She dug her fingers into the sand, the sharp grains helping her divert her gaze from the grim scene before her.

She needed to clear her mind of the horrific sight, to maintain enough composure.

It was this sharp pain that confirmed she wasn’t dreaming.

The scene before her was all too real.

Indeed…

If this were a dream, these non-imaginary details would be too real.

But almost anyone who saw the “peacefully” lying figures here, except for the old man with barely any flesh left, would find it hard not to be moved at this moment.

Those two slogans were even more poignant.

They were such iconic slogans.

“The sky is dead, and the yellow sky shall rise”—the Yellow Turban Rebellion.

“In the year of Jiazi, all under heaven will be greatly auspicious”—the Jiazi year when the rebellion erupted.

There was no doubt that this was the year 184 AD, the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty!

Realizing where she was, Qiao Yan knew that no matter how well she knew the history of the Three Kingdoms of the Eastern Han Dynasty, it was not the same as actually being in this era.

Because this was an era of great hardship for the people.

Locusts, droughts, severe cold, and epidemics alternated and recurred over the hundred years from the end of the Han Dynasty to the Western Jin Dynasty.

To the point where “unburied bones, epidemics rampant, and children being eaten” almost became normal.

But for now, Qiao Yan didn’t have the spare mental energy to consider these things.

She had to figure out the current situation first!

Confirming that this place was already treated as a dumping ground for corpses, and for the time being, no one would pay attention to her after her “resurrection”.

She carefully retreated to a sheltered spot on the mound, withdrew her gaze from her surroundings, and instead focused on her own hands.

Qiao Yan furrowed her brows.

From what she could see, these were clearly not the hands of a commoner.

Although these hands lacked some color now, they seemed to have been deliberately smeared with mud to appear inconspicuous in the crowd.

Where the mud had peeled off, it revealed the pampered skin texture and color underneath.

And on these hands, there were several scars that had been left recently.

Even though the cloth clothes and grass shoes she was wearing didn’t seem to differ much from those worn by the unfortunate commoners around her, they couldn’t hide the fact that the identity of this body was far from simple.

【Of course, she’s not a peasant girl. This is the identity carefully selected by the system.】

“Who’s there?”

The sudden voice made Qiao Yan’s expression serious.

But she quickly realized the two words in the other’s words—

System.

Qiao Yan was stunned for a moment.

Who hasn’t read two web novels?

Especially, if there were no unnatural factors, she should have been long buried underground due to a collapse during an archaeological dig, not waking up now from the body of a ten-year-old girl.

The voice didn’t pay attention to her daze and continued, 【Don’t be nervous, don’t be nervous, I am the strategist system 068.】

Strategist system?

Before Qiao Yan could delve into its meaning, her thoughts were interrupted by a surge of memories.

These were the memories of the ten years of the girl whose body she was now inhabiting.

---

I don’t know if it’s fate, but this girl is also named Qiao Yan.

Just as she had guessed from the appearance of these hands, she was indeed not born into an ordinary family—

She was the granddaughter of Qiao Xuan.

Qiao Xuan, who was praised by some as having “the talent to shape the world,” was not just someone with a keen eye for talent.

He was an outstanding minister in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, who held high positions such as Grand Herald, Minister of Works, and Minister Over the Masses, until he was dismissed due to illness while serving as Grand Commandant.

He was not just a civil official either.

At the end of Emperor Huan of Han’s reign, he also served as the General Who Subdues the Liaodong, fighting against the Xiongnu, and achieved several military successes during his three-year tenure.

This was a solid achievement in both civil and military affairs.

Although they shared the same surname, Qiao Xuan had no direct relation to Xiaoqiao and Daqiao.

He only had two sons.

His younger son was kidnapped by bandits in the capital when he was ten years old.

To eradicate the rampant banditry in the capital and the practice of using the children of the powerful and wealthy as hostages to escape punishment, Qiao Xuan insisted that the officials in charge of the matter should not consider the safety of his younger son.

As a result, the bandits were annihilated, and his younger son died in the incident.

Qiao Yu, the father of this “Qiao Yan,” was the eldest son.

Qiao Xuan was a man of integrity and rectitude.

In the past, he had recommended someone who had a personal grudge against him for a high-ranking position, but he never sought benefits for his son using his own connections.

As a result, Qiao Yu had limited power and, despite being nearly fifty years old, only held the position of the magistrate of Rencheng.

It’s unclear whether it was because the Qiao family had weak connections, but Qiao Yu only had a daughter in his forties, who was also somewhat frail from a young age.

If it were just that, it wouldn’t be a problem.

The ancestral home of the Qiao family was in Suiyang, Liangguo, which could be considered a wealthy family.

In a few years, Qiao Mao, who would serve as the Inspector of Yanzhou, was a relative of Qiao Xuan, and he was a cousin of Qiao Yu.

With such a family background, it wouldn’t be difficult to support a weak girl.

However, unfortunately, in the second month of the seventh year of Guanghe, Qiao Xuan fell seriously ill.

News from Luoyang indicated that this illness was different from the one seven years ago when he was dismissed due to illness.

Qiao Xuan was already in his seventies, and this illness left almost no room for recovery, only keeping him alive by a thread.

During the Han Dynasty, filial piety was greatly valued.

If an elderly father fell seriously ill and was about to pass away, Qiao Yu naturally had to be appointed to an official position and go to Luoyang, taking his wife and only daughter with him.

However, it was precisely in this February that the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out.

The main force of the Yellow Turbans split into three routes.

One route was in Jizhou, where General of Heaven Zhang Jiao was active, another was in Nanyang, where Zhang Mancheng was located, and the third route was to the south of Yanzhou, in the areas of Runan, Yingchuan, and Chenjun in Yuzhou.

As Qiao Yu traveled west with his wife and daughter, they encountered a group of Yellow Turbans responding to the call of the leader, Bo Cai, to march south in Yanzhou.

At this time, the capital was in turmoil due to the uprising of the Yellow Turbans, with amnesty for party members, selection of commanders, recruitment of soldiers from all directions, and the chaos in Yanzhou was not something that could be resolved quickly.

Qiao Yu traveled lightly and quickly on the road, intending to reach the capital as soon as possible.

There were not many guards with him, which unfortunately made them easy targets in the chaos.

Qiao Yu died, largely due to the protection of his guards, allowing Qiao Yan and her mother to escape the encirclement.

They intended to return to Rencheng for shelter but encountered another Yellow Turban army when they reached Shanyang, which was gathering from Pei County to Dongjun of Yanzhou under the command of Bu Ji.

There was no way to escape.

The Yellow Turbans plundered the refugees’ food and forced these homeless refugees to be driven by thieves, forming a northbound flood.

Qiao Yan and her mother were no exception.

They were forced to move forward by the sword, with only two pieces of bread as their daily ration.

For a woman from a prestigious family who had just lost her husband, the scene of chaos that unfolded overnight was too terrifying.

Although they had no carriage and had changed into commoner clothes, they didn’t look conspicuous, and they were protected by a few servants.

Their lives were temporarily safe.

However, being forced to detour to Dongjun instead of returning to their familiar place, Qiao Yan’s mother fell ill on the way to Juye City outside Dayeze.

In her severe illness, seeing Juye City quickly fall from within and become the resting place of the Yellow Turbans was even more terrifying for her.

Listening to her mother’s lament, Qiao Yan felt that if Juye was like this, Rencheng might not be safe either.

Moreover, the slogans shouted by the Yellow Turbans made her feel that the Han Dynasty was on the brink of collapse.

Because of this, in Qiao Yan’s memory, shortly after her mother fell ill, it was as if there was a hole in her body that kept draining her life force, and she quickly deteriorated.

Even though she tried her best to hold on with the strength of missing her daughter, she only lived until early March.

Later, Qiao Yan herself fell ill and was thought to have been infected with an epidemic by the people traveling with her.

…And then, what Qiao Yan saw when she woke up.

She slowly gathered some strength and climbed up the mound where the bodies were discarded.

Looking into the distance, she could faintly see the color of water reflecting the sunlight, extending northward from the dried-up marsh, which was a corner of Dayeze.

It was supposed to be March in the spring.

But as the sun sank slowly, there was no sign of the spring scenery. All she saw was desolation and lifelessness.

It was only because the strategist system was still speaking that Qiao Yan felt that the surroundings were not completely silent.

“Now you know what’s going on. You should understand why I said that this identity was carefully selected by me, right?” System said

Qiao Yan replied as she looked into the distance, “According to the Book of Wei, Qiao Xuan once said to Cao Cao, ‘I am old and wish to entrust my wife to you.’

Qiao Xuan will pass away this year, and Qiao Yu died among the chaos of the Yellow Turbans, leaving only this granddaughter to entrust.”

Qiao Yan was part of this agreement made by an old man to entrust his wife and child.

At this time, Cao Cao was marching from the capital with Huangfu Song to pacify the Yellow Turbans in Yingchuan.

Once the rebellion in Yingchuan was successful, he would come to Yanzhou to suppress the Yellow Turbans in Dongjun.

Strategist system, strategist…

If she really wanted to be a strategist under Cao Cao, this would be the best time to contact him!

But…

“Have you considered one thing, Huangfu Song’s march to Dongjun will be in June, still three months away.”

Qiao Yan knew the system could see the scene before her, but she still turned around in this high place, hoping to show the system the chaotic scene around her.

“First of all, I have to survive these three months.”