The fragrance was certainly real, and Emily Parker herself smelled quite nice too. But the problem was, this emperor was called James Harrison, ninth in line, and later generations always referred to him as Old John Harrison. As for the current era name, it was called Jianyan, but that was only changed two months ago after Old John Harrison had just ascended the throne; for the previous half year, it was still called the second year of Jingkang.

In other words, at this point, the utterly humiliating Jingkang disgrace had already ended, the Northern Song Dynasty had been completely destroyed, Hebei and Hedong had fully fallen, and as for the Southern Song, it was theoretically established, but in reality had not yet found its footing... The entire Song court was, in fact, fleeing south with Old John Harrison, merely trying to find a place to barely survive in Yangzhou.

As for our transmigrator, Mr. John Harrison, after personally seeing thousands of troops and the Huai West plains with absolutely no electrification, and repeatedly verifying with a reasonably fluent Central Plains accent, he confirmed that he had indeed transmigrated, and had become James Harrison—with no mistake. These past few days, his mood had actually been quite poor.

No wonder—James Harrison, Old John Harrison's reputation was terrible enough, but the timing was even worse! In John Harrison's view, if he could have transmigrated two years earlier, before Jingkang, and staged a second Xuanwu Gate coup, wouldn't that have been better? Or two years later, transmigrating directly to Lin'an after things had stabilized—wouldn't that be more comfortable?

Why did it have to be at this critical moment during the flight?

Jin Wuzhu, who was leading a hundred thousand troops to search the mountains and seas, was no fictional character!

Of course, this was just John Harrison's ignorance as a history buff. If he had come two years earlier, he definitely wouldn't have had time to pull off a Xuanwu Gate coup, and if he had come two years later, this body would have been a eunuch—now that would truly be a fate worse than death.

In short, ever since transmigrating, this Mr. Harrison, James Harrison, John Harrison, or rather John Harrison, really hadn't had a single good day.

At first, it was nothing but disappointment and extreme irritation... Wouldn't having air conditioning, a computer, a cell phone, and Haidilao hotpot be better than being a fleeing emperor? Especially one so infamous in history? In reality, although this body was healthy and young, as a modern person with normal values, he still felt a bit of disgust and discomfort.

And as an ordinary person, didn't he miss home?

So, on the second night after transmigrating, this Mr. Harrison personally tried jumping into the Nine-Dragon Well in the Daoist Ancestral Temple again, hoping the Daoist Ancestor would show mercy—only to fail.

And after confirming he couldn't go back, naturally, he fell into self-pity!

A young man who was also twenty-one before transmigrating, just graduated from college, not even started a job yet—how mature could he be? So he started secretly crying at night, started saying he wanted to eat ice cream, started losing his temper and cursing at people... acting all aggrieved, just like a kid on a reality show.

And probably because of this ongoing abnormal behavior, this transmigrator naturally aroused the suspicion of Henry Carter and Charles Young.

As for after a few days, when he finally resigned himself to fate and prepared to live on with a new identity, this freshly-out-of-the-well Song Mr. Harrison had to face a very awkward and tense situation:

Those Song officials in hard-winged hats and round-collared purple, red, and green robes aside, the main people around him were: in the palace, a chief eunuch of the Inner Servants' Department, roughly equivalent to a chief secretary in modern times, Henry Carter; the so-called "Zhihou," actually the commander of the palace bodyguards, Charles Young; two chief ministers, the official prime minister of the Eastern Secretariat, Thomas Howard; the chief of the Western Secretariat, Robert Warren; plus the commander-in-chief of the imperial army, Edward King... He didn't know a single one of them! Hadn't even heard of them!

But considering these were James Harrison's close confidants, and it was these very people who had helped James Harrison initiate and lead the southern flight, they were probably the surrender faction, persecuting loyal anti-Jin officials and bent on running away!

Not only that, but because of his earlier abnormal behavior as a transmigrator, these people were clearly suspicious. Whether you call it concern or vigilance, these days, under Henry Carter's lead, there was always someone carefully watching this Mr. Harrison, and apart from that one public appearance to calm the people on his second day, John Harrison had never really had full access to memorials or court officials.

Obviously, he was being deliberately isolated.

Besides that, Old John Harrison had also left John Harrison with a Emily Parker and a baby just one month old... Hmm... This was a bit awkward, but only awkward—no one was really taking advantage of anyone, since Old John Harrison himself was almost certainly no longer in this world, and the newcomer was clearly a pure soul transmigration, with no baggage at all!

In fact, after learning that this body's official wife and two concubines had all been captured by the Jurchens, John Harrison felt nothing but mockery for James Harrison not being a real man, and not the slightest empathy (in fact, they were all dead by now, but historically James Harrison didn't find out for over a decade, which, in reverse, really does make him less of a man), because he remembered nothing at all—there was no memory fusion whatsoever.

Or rather, in John Harrison's view, as long as he raised Emily Parker and that baby well in Jiangnan, and if he ever got the chance to bring back James Harrison's captured family, he would raise them in Jiangnan too, and that would be enough to satisfy his conscience... It would also count as repaying James Harrison for gifting him this rather capable body.