Counting the illustrious, weighing success and failure, a hundred years' dream is filled with passion.

With the will to strive for good governance and save the world, even if infamy comes rolling in after death.

Taking life and death lightly, but caring deeply about rise and fall, braving the storms alone.

Who doesn't wish for the Great Wall to stand forever? Yet who can foresee the river of hatred flowing east, returning to the sea?

Volume One: "Whose New Swallow Pecks at Spring Mud"

Chapter One: A Dream of Five Hundred Years (Part One)

A cool breeze drifted by, the night was hazy, and a veil-like mist wound around the quiet county town.

Dim moonlight shone on the clear little river, whose waters flowed slowly under the arched bridge. Along the banks stood rows of two- and three-story black-tiled houses. The water-stained walls were covered with green moss, and some were overgrown with ivy, leaving only a row of windows facing the river exposed.

It was already the dead of night. Apart from the croaking of frogs in the river and the barking of dogs at the end of the alley, not a sound could be heard. Only from a small window at the east end came a faint yellow light, and the muffled sound of voices...

Looking in through the open window, one could see only a table, a bench, and a bed. On the table burned a sooty oil lamp, barely illuminating a space of three feet. On the long bench sat a chipped coarse porcelain bowl, holding eight or nine luohan beans. A man in his forties, dressed in a worn long robe, with disheveled hair and beard, squatted nearby, tending a small clay stove in front of him while talking to a teenage boy lying on the bed opposite.

He spoke Mandarin with a Wu accent, his voice hoarse: "Henry, hang in there. Once I finish brewing the medicine, you'll recover after you take it."

The boy on the bed sighed inwardly: 'This must be the thirtieth time he's said that, right?' But knowing it was out of concern, he didn't blame him. Turning his head slightly, the boy saw that unfamiliar yet kind face, covered in sweat and anxiety, and felt a warmth in his heart. Knowing the man would be busy for a while yet, he slowly closed his eyes, recalling the incredible events of recent days.

He had originally been a young deputy division chief, at the height of his career, but after waking from sleep, he found himself inhabiting the body of this dying boy. When the boy's spirit was weak, he had somehow merged with him, gaining the boy's consciousness and memories, becoming this youth from five hundred years ago.

Was he Zhuang Zhou or the butterfly? Was he the original self or the current Adam Sullivan? He was completely confused—perhaps both, perhaps neither, or perhaps he was now a brand new Adam Sullivan.

As absurd as it was, it had truly happened, leaving him unable to face reality for days. But then he thought, after all, he was an unmarried orphan with no attachments—couldn't he make a living anywhere? Besides, trading his former deputy division chief status for a body more than ten years younger seemed like a good deal.

It was just that he suddenly developed many emotions belonging to the boy, which made him a bit uncomfortable.

Survival of the fittest—so he had to adapt. Adam Sullivan told himself this.

※※※

Once he opened his mind and accepted his new identity, memories belonging to the boy surged in like a tide. He knew his name was Adam Sullivan, with the childhood name Henry, thirteen years old. He was the only son of Brian Sullivan of Yongchang Lane, Kuaiji County, Shaoxing Prefecture, Ming Dynasty.

As for Brian Sullivan, he was from a collateral branch of the prominent Shen family in Shaoxing, with a moderately well-off background. He had started his education early in the clan school and was a good scholar. At eighteen, he passed the county, prefectural, and academy exams in succession, becoming a stipendiary student who received a monthly grain allowance—a "stipendiary student" was a xiucai, but not all xiucai were stipendiary students, as only a handful of top scorers received state support.

As a scholar who could live on the emperor's grain, Brian Sullivan brought great honor to his parents.

But fate turned, and fortune played its tricks. From his first attempt at the provincial exam at nineteen, Mr. Sullivan failed four times in a row. This was normal, as Jiangsu and Zhejiang were lands of literary talent, and Shaoxing Prefecture was the heart of southern China's scholarly tradition. In counties like Yuyao, Kuaiji, and Shanyin, almost every household had children studying, a true land of hidden dragons and crouching tigers, with large numbers of outstanding scholars taking the exams every year.

With limited quotas and fierce competition, someone like Mr. Sullivan would have passed long ago elsewhere, but in Shaoxing, he could only be a foil to others year after year. Later, after his parents passed away, he observed five years of mourning. By the time he returned to the exams, he was already in his thirties, past the prime age for candidates...

But Scholar Sullivan had devoted his life to study—what else could he do if not take exams? Unwilling to accept defeat, he tried two more times, with predictable results. Not only did he waste his best years, but he also squandered the family's once-considerable wealth, leaving life extremely difficult, surviving on coarse grains for years, never seeing a scrap of meat.