Benjamin Carter, such a useless person, still has his own pursuits—eating from his bowl while eyeing the pot, scheming to have both Emily & Olivia, thinking how nice it would be to have them all in one bed.

At one moment, he thinks Lillian Carter is so pure and untainted, emerging from the mud without being sullied, clear and elegant without being seductive; at another, he feels that Charlotte Green is like a wild crane or drifting cloud, quietly guarding her own dignity. Then there are those charming maids like Sophia White and Grace Miller...

Ideally, he could even keep Madeline Smith and Abigail Harris by his side, and he thinks it's such a pity that Julia Harris ended up with Robert Harris. Even Second Sister and Evelyn—aren't they also alluring and enchanting?

Isn't this guy just wishing that all the water could only soak his patch of mud?

It's just that he doesn't have the ability to reach that point—not that poverty limits his imagination, but that his ability limits his desire for control. He simply can't do it, or it's fundamentally impossible.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs determines the level of a person; different people have different pursuits. Once you surpass a certain level, you naturally seek a higher stage.

So-called indifference to fame and fortune, seeing through the ways of the world—that's just an excuse for the disappointed to escape reality. Who doesn't want to wield the power of life and death when awake, and rest on a beauty's lap when drunk?

If Cao Xueqin had really become someone like Nalan Mingzhu—well, at least in the early days—do you think he would have written ""Dream of the Red Chamber"" with such detachment from life and glory?

With a cold laugh, he closed the book. Suddenly, the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, and a deep voice came through. Ethan Brooks immediately replied respectfully, ""Hello, Minister Bolton, this is... Yes, yes, I understand. I'll be there right away...""

After hanging up, Ethan Brooks tried his best to suppress his wild joy and excitement, to calm himself down, but he couldn't manage it.

He took a deep breath, but suddenly felt a wave of dizziness and his vision went black.

Instinctively sensing something was wrong—he already had the three highs, especially high blood lipids, his biggest health concern—he hadn't expected that at such a critical moment, he absolutely had to hold on, that nothing could go wrong now. But his body was out of control, going limp and sliding downward.

He reached out instinctively, trying to grab something, but only managed to grab that copy of ""Dream of the Red Chamber.""

With a ripping sound, he tore off the book's cover as he grabbed it. Clutching the cover, the images of palace ladies on it seemed to blur, and he slowly collapsed to the floor.

Chapter One: I Am Here

The urgent sound of horse hooves startled the young man leaning against the carriage seat out of his deep thoughts. He looked around in a daze—everything was still the same, nothing he had hoped for had happened.

In fact, truly going back might not be a good thing.

He knew his own body well—his blood lipids and blood pressure were frighteningly high. If he really lay down, he probably wouldn't wake up again.

Even if he did wake up, it would be too hard to bear. If he had to spend ten or twenty years on that hospital bed, he'd rather stumble forward in this unknown world.

He sighed softly, looked at the light blue robe on his body, and noticed the jade belt at his waist was a bit loose, making him uncomfortable. When did his thirty-five-inch waist become like this?

Although losing weight was always something he longed for, in this situation, it was hard to feel happy about it.

That's right—transmigration, the most clichéd kind. He didn't even know how he ended up like this.

Ethan Brooks, son of General Daniel Brooks, courtesy name Brian, Brian Brooks—what the heck is this?

Uh, he wasn't sure if he was the same Brian Brooks from the annotated edition of ""Dream of the Red Chamber"" he was reading before he fainted. But in that book, wasn't Brian Brooks supposed to be handsome and ambitious, one of the Four Heroes of the Red Chamber, already coming of age?

Looking at his own hands, they looked like those of an eleven- or twelve-year-old child—just a bit stronger and with some fading calluses.

And then there was this Great Zhou dynasty, the Great Zhou Empire.

Who knows how this Great Zhou dynasty came to be—it actually exists. Wasn't the Eastern and Western Zhou two thousand years ago?

In just these few days, Brian Brooks had already read the official histories. This Great Zhou was not that Great Zhou, but the Zhang family's Great Zhou.

In the seventh year of Zhengde, Liu Chong and Liu Chen, horsemen from Northern Zhili, started an uprising, sweeping through Northern Zhili, Shandong, and Henan. That same year, Ge Xian, the leader of the Suzhou machine workers who had been imprisoned, broke out of jail and led the Suzhou machine workers and weavers in a rebellion, sweeping through Jiangnan.

Also in May of that year, Prince Ning, Zhu Chenhao, raised the banner of rebellion in Nanchang. At this time, the legendary general Wang Yangming was no longer around to suppress the chaos, and Jiangxi fell.

In August, Zhang Dingkui, the seventh-generation descendant of Zhang Shicheng—one of the warlords at the end of the Yuan dynasty who founded the Great Zhou—rose up in Suzhou, once again raising the Great Zhou banner. The entire Ming dynasty, under the debauchery of the Zhengde Emperor, finally entered an unexpected dead end.

At the beginning of the ninth year of Zhengde, Zhang Dingkui captured Jinling, officially declared it the capital, named the country Great Zhou, and quickly launched a northern expedition, sweeping through the Central Plains, ultimately completing the dynastic transition and establishing the Great Zhou dynasty.

And so, history changed for no apparent reason, and he, Brian Brooks, also, for no apparent reason, arrived in Shandong during the second year of Yonglong in the Great Zhou dynasty.

Brian Brooks couldn't quite remember what the Zhengde era of the Ming dynasty corresponded to in the Western calendar, but he vaguely recalled it should be the early sixteenth century. The Great Zhou dynasty had already been established for nearly a hundred years, with three or four emperors having reigned.