It is said that the plow ox was discovered by a mountain villager when he went to a nearby county town for the market and found someone selling it at a very low price. Out of greed, he exchanged all his mountain goods for the ox. When the ox was brought back to the mountain village, the villagers realized they had been duped: the ox had persistent diarrhea and was too weak to stand.

At that time, the mountain goods paid by the villager did not belong to him alone; several families in the village had pooled their goods and entrusted him to sell them in the county. When he returned with the ox, the cooperating families were initially delighted and agreed to co-own the ox. Now that the ox had a problem, a dispute arose.

This mountain village was a clan-based settlement of people with the same surname, and the arguments left the clan leader exhausted from mediating. At this moment, Henry Clark, who was being supported as he strolled around the grain-drying yard, resolved the dispute with a single word—“tea!”

The tannic acid in tea is an excellent remedy for diarrhea caused by acclimatization issues. The British were the first to discover this secret, so they went to great lengths to steal Chinese tea seeds and experiment with planting them in various places. Once they succeeded, they boasted that “with one hand holding a teacup and the other a musket, they conquered the world.”

The U.S. Army Field Survival Manual happens to mention the uses of tea leaves, instructing travelers to use tree leaves and grass stems to boil tannic acid to stop diarrhea... A few days later, the ox miraculously recovered, which immediately earned Henry Clark the right to enter the clan leader’s main house.

His recollection was interrupted by a question, and the clan leader asked again. Henry Clark tilted his head, looking confused, and asked in return, “Where is this place?”

Such an answer was clearly not in line with the clan leader’s way of speaking. After Henry Clark explained several times, he understood, immediately lowered his head, poked at the embers with a fire stick, as if pondering something, and after a while replied, “Old man Adam Brooks, this is Chengjia’ao!”

This answer was meaningless; what Henry Clark wanted to know was: which province, which city, which county...

When he first arrived, Henry Clark suspected he had come to the land of dwarves. The people here were all about 1.5 meters tall, there were no telephones, no televisions, not even electricity, and contact with the outside world was almost nonexistent. Henry Clark tried several times to ask someone to take him to a nearby big city, but due to the language barrier, even such a simple thing was impossible.

Even more frightening, the people here were almost illiterate. Henry Clark tried several times to write down his requests, only to find the other party staring at him with wide, bewildered eyes...

After several attempts, he vaguely felt something was wrong—this did not seem to be a real world; everything felt so bizarre. The villagers’ clothing, language, living habits... all seemed abnormal.

This made him a little afraid, a little uneasy, and of course, a little lost.

After thinking for a moment, Henry Clark pointed in the direction of the county town mentioned in the villagers’ stories and asked, “What county is that?”

“Qishui,” the clan leader replied, then pointed in another direction and continued, “That’s Yingshan; that’s Huangzhou Prefecture...”

The clan leader gave a sly smile, showing the pride of a mountain dweller: “Our Chengjia’ao belongs neither to Qixian nor to Yingshan.”

Huangzhou?!

That name was familiar to Henry Clark. Judging by the terrain, if this area was near Huangzhou, then he should be on the southern slopes of the Dabie Mountains. That “travel enthusiast” had a map of Hubei in his suitcase; if he could get back to it, he could use the knowledge from the manual and the lay of the land to roughly determine his location.

Henry Clark asked again, “What day is it today?”

The clan leader tried hard to adapt to Henry Clark’s way of speaking, and, using as formal a tone as possible, recited what he had looked up in recent days: “Today is the year of Xinyou, the month of Wuxu, the day of Yiwei.”

Henry Clark was dumbfounded by this answer.

Seeing Henry Clark’s confused face, the clan leader added, “The fourth year of Yuanfeng.”

This was still incomprehensible. Henry Clark continued to look at the clan leader with a bewildered expression, trembling.

The clan leader’s expression grew serious, and he tentatively asked, “Liao Kingdom, what is the current reign title?”

This question struck Henry Clark like a bolt of lightning—it instantly illuminated his world. Could such a primitive village really exist in the Dabie Mountains?

If this was the Dabie Mountains, how could there be such a lush, primeval forest? How could there be such a group of retro people?

What has happened to this world?

I have traveled through time.

The Liao Kingdom existed during the Northern Song Dynasty...

If this was the Song Dynasty, then the differences in the villagers’ clothing, language, and so on could all be explained.

Henry Clark had once watched a documentary about the excavation of Song tombs in Hubei and Fuzhou. The tomb owners ranged in age from 12 to 50, and according to skeletal analysis, their heights in life ranged from 1.21 meters to 1.57 meters. Based on this, it was inferred that in the Southern Song, even well-nourished children of wealthy families averaged under 1.6 meters in height...

If this was the Song Dynasty, the villagers’ height would be normal.

In addition, there was the issue of building materials in the village. Although, according to archaeological research, “brick-shaped” adobe had appeared in China since the Zhou Dynasty, by the Song Dynasty, brick structures still had not become widespread among the general population—the preserved Xu Prince Consort’s Mansion in Chaozhou, except for a brick courtyard wall added in the Ming Dynasty, was mainly all-wooden structures inside.

In other words: by the Song Dynasty, brick-structured houses had not yet become common even for a prince consort of the current dynasty.