Jizhou, Julu Commandery, Lower Quyang County.
As the morning sun rose, a gentle ray of light fell upon Zhang Xin’s face.
Zhang Xin’s eyelids twitched, and he slowly opened his eyes.
He touched his head; it was still there. He then touched the steel saber at his waist.
It was also still there.
“I’ve lived another day.”
Zhang Xin breathed a sigh of relief, stood up from the city wall, and looked at the Han army camp with a large ‘Han’ flag standing over ten li away.
Outside the camp, there was a faint black line, which gradually deepened as time passed.
Zhang Xin’s gaze sharpened.
“Wake up!”
“Don’t sleep!”
“The Han are about to attack the city!”
Zhang Xin yelled with a hoarse voice, while quickly moving along the city wall. When he encountered Yellow Turban Soldiers who were fast asleep, he would kick them in the backside.
Following Zhang Xin’s shouts, countless Yellow Turban Soldiers, with their heads wrapped in Yellow Turbans, stood up, forming a yellow tide on the city wall.
That’s right, they were Yellow Turbans.
And Zhang Xin was one of them.
He didn’t know how he had transmigrated, only remembering that he was working overtime at his company, suddenly felt sleepy, and then fell asleep.
When he woke up again, he had transmigrated into the body of a fourteen-year-old boy.
Based on the boy’s memories, Zhang Xin knew that he had transmigrated to the fifth year of Guanghe, which was 182 AD, two years before the Yellow Turban Rebellion at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
The original owner was a sickly person who could die at any moment, and his family was just ordinary peasants.
“Hiss, this background…”
Zhang Xin frowned deeply, then shook his head in relief.
Never mind, since he had been reborn from death, he had profited.
Actually, Zhang Xin felt a little secretly pleased about transmigrating to this era.
The late Han and Three Kingdoms period, who in later generations didn’t know about it?
He was familiar with this history!
“When the Yellow Turban Rebellion breaks out, I’ll go pledge allegiance to Boss Cao. With my knowledge that’s over a thousand years ahead, it shouldn’t be hard to become a marquis or something in the future, right? Then I’ll have beautiful wives and concubines…”
Just as Zhang Xin was happily daydreaming, the whispers of his parents next door shattered his fantasy.
It turned out that there was a famine this year, and their family had no food left. His parents had been hungry for three days and were planning to exchange him, this sickly child, for someone else’s child…
Exchanging children for food!
These four large characters popped into Zhang Xin’s mind.
These four characters, which had only existed in historical records, he never expected them to actually happen to him now.
“Escape!”
Zhang Xin was so scared that he fled that home overnight.
Only after leaving home did he realize that the knowledge from later generations, which he had been so proud of, was utterly useless at this moment.
If he went to dig wild vegetables, he couldn’t distinguish which ones were edible and which weren’t.
The wild fruits he finally found were snatched away, and he couldn’t beat those vagrants who had been working for years.
Reasoning with them was pointless; no one listened to him.
This was an era where people ate people.
Literally, people here, when extremely hungry, would truly eat other people.
If not for his sickly appearance, those vagrants, fearing they might get sick from eating him, would probably have devoured him long ago.
Just as Zhang Xin was on the verge of starving to death, he finally reached a county town.
There, he ate his first meal since transmigrating—
A bowl of millet porridge that was almost entirely water.
Subsequently, Zhang Xin settled down in the vagrant camp outside the city, living day by day on the government’s handouts.
He barely managed to endure until the famine passed, and just as the government was preparing to resettle Zhang Xin and the other vagrants…
The plague arrived!
After a famine, there was bound to be a plague. The weak-bodied Zhang Xin fell ill almost immediately.
So he was thrown into the sick camp to await death.
“I really am the most unsuccessful transmigrator in history…”
Just as Zhang Xin was in despair, a group of people with Yellow Turbans wrapped around their heads arrived at the sick camp.
They carried some talismans. As long as someone knelt and begged, those people would light a talisman, dissolve it in water to make talisman water, and give it to the sick person to drink.
Seeing this, how could Zhang Xin not know that he had encountered the Yellow Turbans?
“Tsk, it’s just a small trick to fool people, only deceiving these ignorant farmers…”
Zhang Xin struggled to get up from the ground, walked to the group of Yellow Turbans, and knelt down.
“I beg the envoy to bestow talisman water!”
Treat a dead horse as if it were alive, he told himself.
Miraculously, after drinking the talisman water, his illness actually began to improve little by little.
After the Yellow Turbans administered the talisman water for the last time, the leading burly man found Zhang Xin and asked, “What is your name?”
Zhang Xin answered truthfully.
The burly man then asked, “Do you still have anyone in your family?”
Zhang Xin thought of the parents who wanted to eat him and shook his head dejectedly.
“Do you want to eat your fill?”
Zhang Xin’s eyes turned green, and he nodded frantically.
“Then will you follow me from now on?”
Only later did Zhang Xin learn that this seemingly ordinary Yellow Turban strongman was the famous General of Earth, Zhang Bao, of later generations!
“Little Commander, the Han are coming!”
A voice interrupted Zhang Xin’s memories.
Zhang Xin looked down at the city, and the Han had already completed their formation outside the city.
As the war drums sounded, the Han archers, under the cover of the sword and shield soldiers, advanced towards the city wall.
“Archers, shoot when the bandits are within fifty paces! Sword and shield soldiers provide cover! Spearmen, take cover on the ground!”
Zhang Xin’s hoarse voice echoed on the city wall. Several personal guards around him also shouted loudly, trying their best to relay his orders to every Yellow Turban Soldier.
Soon, the Han archers approached the city wall, and both sides began to exchange fire.
Before long, the Yellow Turbans on the city wall were suppressed by the Han arrows, unable to raise their heads.
Zhang Xin watched all of this through a gap in the city wall, his heart unperturbed.
There was no way around it; in ancient times, not just anyone could be an archer.
A bow that could shoot an arrow a hundred meters away required dozens of kilograms of arm strength just to draw it. Ordinary people could at most draw it two or three times before exhausting themselves.
Even well-trained elites could generally only shoot about ten arrows.
Most Yellow Turban Soldiers were common people who didn’t get enough to eat. It was already good enough if these people could even shoot an arrow; expecting them to suppress the imperial guards of the Han Dynasty? That was impossible.
Seeing the Yellow Turbans on the city wall suppressed, a gap opened in the Han army formation, and a squad of iron-armored Yellow Turban Soldiers, pushing several siege ladders, slowly approached the city wall.
Zhang Xin took a deep breath. He knew the main event was coming.
Siege ladders were not like those depicted in movies and TV shows, where they were long bamboo ladders that could be easily pushed over by the defenders on the city wall.
If that were the case, the defenders would only need to push the ladders, and the attackers would never be able to breach the city.
On the contrary, their appearance was somewhat similar to modern ladder fire trucks. The bottom was a base with wheels, making it easy for Yellow Turban Soldiers to push. The ladder above could be folded up normally and then unfolded during a siege. The top of the ladder had hooks that could be firmly fixed to the city wall, making it very difficult to push away.
Once a siege ladder was set up, it was equivalent to building a ramp to ascend the city from below, allowing attacking Yellow Turban Soldiers to quickly climb the city via this ramp.
“Prepare for battle!” Zhang Xin shouted loudly down at the city wall: “Where are the rolling logs and stones? All of you, hurry up! If the Han breach the city, every single one of us will die!”
Hearing Zhang Xin’s voice, the civilian laborers below sped up their movements, and a continuous stream of rolling logs and stones were quickly transported to the top of the city wall.
“The Han are coming!”
As the Han siege ladders were set against the city wall, Zhang Xin tightened his grip on the long spear in his hand and stood up.