He lowered his head and glanced at the clothes he was wearing. They were made of fine silk, but the style was definitely not from modern Earth—more like the ancient costumes seen in TV dramas.

Beside the bed stood a large mirror. It wasn’t very clear; it should be a bronze mirror.

Chad Sullivan struggled to sit up, mustering all his courage to look into the mirror.

He couldn’t be blamed for this. Ever since his face was disfigured, every time he looked in the mirror felt like a nightmare—he would scare even himself.

Seeing the face in the mirror, Chad Sullivan was first stunned, then tears streamed down his face.

Although this face was haggard and pale, it was incomparably handsome, even bearing an eighty to ninety percent resemblance to Chad Sullivan before his disfigurement.

Chad Sullivan confirmed one thing.

He had transmigrated. His soul had crossed over to this unfamiliar world, into the body of a man both strange and yet familiar.

It had been so long since he’d seen such a handsome face.

Chad Sullivan gazed almost greedily at the face in the mirror.

Heaven had truly given him a new life, truly restored his handsome face—even if it was in a completely unfamiliar world.

This was wonderful. After all, since his parents passed away, he had no real attachment to modern Earth.

The feeling of being reborn was simply amazing!

At that moment, a flood of complex information surged into his mind—memories belonging to the original owner of this body.

……

This was a world both familiar and strange.

Familiar, because it was very much like ancient China, with similar culture, the same written language, and similar people.

Strange, because this was not Earth—the map was different.

This world had the Four Books and Five Classics, the works of ancient Chinese sages, the very foundation of Chinese civilization seemed to be present.

But not a single Chinese dynasty existed here—no Qin, no Han, no Jin, and so on…

It was odd: the territory and history were different, but the culture was the same.

Because this world’s history had once experienced a great cataclysm, after which civilization was reborn. These books were unearthed in an orderly fashion and became the great key to the revival of civilization in this world.

Therefore, books like the Four Books and Five Classics held an even more exalted status here.

Not only that, but this world had martial arts—personal combat prowess was far more advanced than in ancient China.

At this moment, the dynasty Chad Sullivan found himself in was called the Great Yan Empire.

It was a vast empire—its territory, after conversion, exceeded 14 million square kilometers, surpassing any dynasty in ancient China.

This dynasty was also different from those of ancient China. Besides a central empire, it was surrounded by many vassal states.

They were vassal states, not tributaries—similar to the relationship between the Zhou king and the feudal lords, but the central empire was much stronger than the Zhou court. All these vassal states acknowledged the Yan Emperor as the True Dragon Son of Heaven.

And in terms of pure civilization, the Great Yan Empire far surpassed the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods of China, roughly comparable to the Tang and Song dynasties.

……

The country Chad Sullivan was currently in was a major vassal state in the south—Yue State!

Yue State had three provinces, forty-five counties, an area of over 390,000 square kilometers, a population of more than ten million, a thriving commerce, a bold and forthright populace, and flourishing martial arts.

The Ning family had ruled Yue State for over four hundred years.

Chad Sullivan was in the Tian’nan Province of Yue State, Nujiang County, Xuanwu City.

The original owner of this body he had transmigrated into was also named Chad Sullivan.

The key point was that the two of them looked seventy to eighty percent alike. This didn’t seem like a coincidence. As for what complex reasons lay behind it, he had no way of knowing for now.

But after reading the memories of this body, he felt that this otherworldly Chad Sullivan was a complete tragicomedy.

……

Chad Sullivan grew up in Xuanwu City, Hanshui Town, Maple Leaf Village.

His family were outsiders, only moving to Maple Leaf Village when Chad Sullivan was just over two years old.

His parents were ordinary tenant farmers. The whole Nujiang County was mountainous, with much water and little arable land. The four members of Chad Sullivan’s family together owned only two mu of farmland and two mu of hillside. Both parents were very hardworking, but even so, their yearly harvest barely kept them fed.

Despite being born into a farming family, and not being the only son, his parents doted on him from childhood, unwilling to scold him or make him work. Even though the family was dirt poor, his parents still sent him to school, so in a sense, he could be considered a scholar.

However, his studies were quite poor. After ten years of schooling, he recognized fewer than a thousand characters.

It wasn’t because he was lazy—on the contrary, he was very diligent. His poor grades were due to low intelligence. Not quite at the level of mental deficiency, but about the same as Forrest Gump in “Forrest Gump”—slow to speak, expressionless, slow to react.

Aside from his handsome face, he was good for nothing, a byword for uselessness within several hundred li.

His younger brother Brian Sullivan was a ne’er-do-well, having practiced martial arts for years without success, and had now become a complete rascal.

As his parents grew older, the family’s situation worsened, to the point where they could barely put food on the table—the very picture of utter poverty.