“You, you are the Grand Master of the Great Wisdom Hall, James Brooks!” Mr. Sullivan lifted his eyes and secretly glanced at Old Albert Brooks’s expression, replying in a low voice. Seeing the other’s eyebrows about to shoot up again, he immediately recalled how this man had once been knocked out cold by his colleague David Thompson from the yamen with an iron ruler, and hurriedly scooted a few feet back, explaining repeatedly, “Please don’t be angry, sir, I remember now, I remember. You were just possessed by Maitreya Buddha, your spirit was greatly depleted, so you forgot your worldly identity. In a bit, I’ll go to Dr. Howard’s house to get you a calming prescription…”

“Enough nonsense, hurry up and tell me who I am?!” Chris Brooks really disliked Mr. Sullivan’s roundabout way of speaking, glared fiercely at him, and urged loudly.

“Yes, yes!!” Mr. Sullivan shivered again, stammering as he added, “Your secular name is James Brooks, in the early years of Zhizheng, you fled here from the north…”

He rambled on for quite a while, and Chris Brooks finally started to understand. It seemed he had hit the jackpot of the twenty-first century, a one-way ticket to transmigration. And it was a soul transmigration, the kind with no return.

“Heavens, why are you messing with me like this!” With Albert Brooks’s body, Chris Brooks pressed his hand to his forehead, his vision going black in waves. As a tech nerd who often read web novels, Chris Brooks didn’t actually reject the idea of transmigration. What he really couldn’t accept was that his treatment after transmigrating was so much worse than that of his fellow transmigrators. He hadn’t sworn brotherhood with the emperor, nor did he have an official father as his backer, and he had transmigrated to the late Yuan dynasty, just as the Red Turban Army was starting their rebellion! The host was a butcher, who had never studied a day in his life, nor knew any martial arts. Other than a rented pig-killing knife and a half-collapsed butcher shop about to go out of business, he had nothing at all!

As for the host’s identity, it was as low as could be—a refugee. Ten years ago, after the Yellow River burst its banks, he lost his home and parents, and fled to Xuzhou with his older sister. Then he was taken in by the authorities, given the number eighty-one, so his name became James Brooks, and people called him Albert Brooks as a nickname.

James Brooks’s older sister was numbered Robert Brooks, and because she was fairly good-looking, she caught the eye of a Inspector Thompson in his fifties from the yamen, who took her into his household as his fifth concubine. Thanks to his sister’s connection, Albert Brooks was “lucky” enough to be sent to a butcher as an unpaid apprentice at the age of eight. After his master died, he inherited the butcher shop, slaughtering pigs and sheep, castrating pigs and oxen, making a living for his family.

Originally, life as a butcher was at least manageable. Every day, working with the knife, he could keep a few taels of offal like bloody necks and intestines, which was better than eating chaff and wild herbs. However, Albert Brooks’s fate was “absurdly noble”—as Mr. Sullivan put it, “the worldly avatar of Maitreya Buddha, not something ordinary people can cover up.” First, at thirteen, he brought misfortune to his own sister and unborn nephew, and last year, his makeshift brother-in-law, the inspector, broke his neck in a wrestling match at a yamen banquet with a Mongol darughachi’s guard, dying on the spot.

So ever since his brother-in-law died, Albert Brooks’s life had gone from bad to worse. Not only did people like Mr. Thompson from the yamen always find excuses to bully him, but the local thugs and ruffians also often came to his butcher shop to cause trouble. Yet Albert Brooks was “broad-minded and disdained to stoop to the level of commoners” (in Mr. Sullivan’s words). He endured everything, never fighting back when beaten or scolded. Until yesterday evening, when he overpaid three months’ worth of knife-sharpening fees to curry favor with Mr. Thompson, only to be knocked out by an iron ruler.

What happened after that didn’t need Mr. Sullivan to explain further. Chris Brooks probably understood the ins and outs better than anyone in this world. Albert Brooks was killed by Mr. Thompson’s iron ruler—or rather, his soul was knocked out of his body. And he, the twenty-first-century science and engineering nerd Chris Brooks, had exhausted himself playing games all night, his soul leaving his body, and through a series of scientifically inexplicable coincidences, ended up in Albert Brooks’s head. Then, unable to tell if he was in the real world or a virtual one, he fought back, killing the richest clerk in Xuzhou, the Semu man Stephen Parker, as if he were a mini-boss in a game. Although he didn’t even get a single green item, he accidentally triggered the Red Turban Army’s uprising in the city ahead of schedule. The main Red Turban force, which had long been lurking outside the city, immediately launched a full-scale assault.

“The leader of the Red Turbans, I mean those rebels outside—who’s their boss?” Thinking that he’d have to deal with the Red Turbans in the city sooner or later, Chris Brooks pressed his head, which was already starting to burn from overexertion, and asked weakly.

“You, you have nothing to do with them…” Mr. Sullivan was startled and instinctively retorted. Halfway through, he looked around, then lowered his voice and corrected himself, “Ah, I see, you’re still like this because Maitreya Buddha possessed you, so you don’t remember anything. That Sesame Li, Head Thompson, must be an old acquaintance of yours. He used to come to the city to sell sesame, and more than once bought pig’s feet from you!”