Ha, in those times, powerful figures would simply behead bandits who killed and robbed—who would not only spare their lives, but even treat their wounds? Besides, before they lost consciousness, the merchant had already escaped; after they woke up, I didn’t tell them that someone had been sent to chase the wealthy merchant (I did this on purpose). Once the merchant reported the case, where in this vast world could they go? If I didn’t take them in, who would?

After nightfall, Brian Cooper returned alone, looking quite excited. I knew then that the merchant was finished. There was no time to ask for details; we began to discuss our general strategy for the future.

At the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, land annexation was becoming increasingly intense. Great landlords and powerful clans were everywhere, possessing vast lands and many household servants. It’s said that when Mi Zhu married off his sister to Liu Bei, her dowry included 4,000 retainers. According to the latest archaeological findings, Zhao Yun was actually the head of such retainers at the time, which is why he became Liu Bei’s man.

We believed that, at present, it was unrealistic for us to step forward and ease these sharp class conflicts. The best approach was to make preparations and wait until four years later, when the Yellow Turban Rebellion would shatter the old world and its order. Then, we could step forward to rebuild a new world. Of course, for this purpose, we had to find a place that the Yellow Turban Rebellion wouldn’t destroy, so we could gather our strength.

Given Liu Bei’s low status at the moment, it was impossible for him to attract renowned scholars. For now, I had to use this study tour to expand my reputation and make connections with capable people. At the same time, considering the extremely backward smelting technology of the Han dynasty, William Bennett needed to quickly record all the smelting techniques he had learned, so that in the future we could recruit craftsmen (who, throughout Chinese history, have always had low status and are easy to recruit) to provide us with high-quality weapons and armor for our battles.

Given Liu Bei’s lifelong poverty, we decided that Brian Cooper’s future task would be to make money. War is fought with money—only with wealth can we have supplies. We already had the initial resources of this era (30,000 taels of gold), so we had to use them wisely to lay a financial foundation for our cause. Since knowledge in this era was held only by a few powerful families and very few commoners could read, we decided that David Clark’s task would be to teach and nurture people, passing on some advanced technologies that could be understood in this era to the children of commoners.

Of course, although on the surface David Clark’s work seemed the easiest, I was preparing to entrust him with an important task. But the time was not yet right, so I didn’t plan to tell him.

I must say, the one we were most grateful for now was William Bennett’s adorable but clumsy nephew. The question bank his teacher installed for us was of great use—it contained all the math, physics, and chemistry textbooks from elementary to high school. These textbooks had been compiled and refined by Chinese and foreign teachers over hundreds of years, and even included some excellent teaching plans. Since we didn’t have a printer, our first task was to copy all the books by hand—mainly the elementary school textbooks, since deeper knowledge would probably be beyond the understanding of people in this era.

Finally, we discussed our political goal: to take advantage of the moment when the feudal imperial power would be at its weakest after the Yellow Turban Rebellion, to hold the emperor hostage and command the warlords, and to establish a constitutional monarchy. Through constitutional monarchy, we would ease class conflicts and thereby extend the Han dynasty for another 300 years—or even forever—eliminating the hidden dangers of the later Five Barbarians’ chaos, so that the Han people would never again be bullied by foreign invaders.

For this, we swore together: “Whoever offends the mighty Han, no matter how far, shall be punished.”

Chapter Two: My Study Tour

Section One: Intimidating Yu Jin

At dawn, we set out from the mountains with the twelve horses we had gathered and a carriage. The horses were loaded with the clothes and gold and silver we had collected, and three former captives lay in the carriage.

None of us could ride, so we had to lead the horses on foot. At that time, the sky was overcast, and I felt uneasy. According to the main theme in movies, this should have been a moment when the first light of dawn filled the sky with rosy clouds, but our first appearance in the Three Kingdoms was under swirling dark clouds and a sky full of gloom.

“This old heaven doesn’t care about the main theme at all,” I muttered.

After walking a long way, I stopped and looked back at the valley. I saw countless vultures circling in the sky above, and on the hill stood an animal I couldn’t tell was a tiger or a wolf. It let out a whimper in our direction. I guessed they had all been drawn by the corpses in the valley. The tiger or wolf on the hill was probably standing guard for the animals feeding below. I waved at it, then turned and continued on my way.

Soon, it began to rain, and we walked into the chaos of the world in the rain.

Many years later, Patrick Turner would always describe our departure from Mount Tai like this: “My lord returned from learning on Mount Tai. On the day he left the mountain, a fierce tiger escorted him for ten li, flocks of birds came from the west, torrential rain poured down, and heaven and earth wept.”

How frustrating—what could Patrick Turner, lying in the carriage at the time, have possibly seen? But I understood that he only said this to show Guan Yu and Zhang Fei that he was the first to follow me. Of course, I couldn’t be bothered to argue.

However, because of this, I gained a nickname: 毘 (pronounced “pi”) Tiger. After that, with my poor command of classical Chinese, I kept looking for chances to ask learned people what this nickname meant. But they always thought I was fishing for compliments, so every time I ended up slinking away in embarrassment. Privately, I guessed it might mean “neighbor of the tiger” or “one who commands tigers.” Not bad—at least it wasn’t “gecko.”