“Can strategists not ascend to the throne?”
Volume One: Yellow Turban Rebellion, Clear Voice of the Phoenix, Chapter 1: Yanzhou Yellow Turbans
Chapter 001
In the sixth year of Guanghe, summer drought, poor autumn harvests, and winter was bitterly cold; in the North Sea and Donglai regions, wells were frozen solid, over a foot thick.
In the second month of the seventh year of Guanghe, the Yellow Turban Rebellion began.
Qiao Yan vaguely heard murmurs around her, slowly pulling her from a faint and ignorant state.
At first, it was just someone saying, “If a major epidemic returns, what should we do? Might as well get rid of it early,” and then there were chaotic slogans mixed in with the fading footsteps of a departing crowd.
The slogans, shouted all jumbled together, only vaguely recognizable as “Heaven is dead, the Yellow Heaven shall rise” and “This year of Jiazi, the world is great.”
But those two lines were already terrifying enough!
Qiao Yan jolted wide awake.
The stench of rotten blood and decay, mixed with the scent of dust, hit her square in the face, making her cough uncontrollably.
As her vision cleared, she realized that the smell was far from the biggest problem at hand.
She was standing on a dry mound by a swamp.
This mound should have had some grass and plants, but now it was just a desolate patch of sand and… corpses.
It wasn’t even summer yet; these people had died no more than a day or two ago and were still recognizable.
The corpse closest to her had thin, dehydrated limbs, but its face was slightly swollen, a sign of dying from hunger.
And it wasn’t just one person!
Propping herself up, Qiao Yan looked around, and the sight of the mangled bodies nearly made her gag.
But her body had gone without food for days, so there was nothing to vomit, just some bitter bile rising up.
She instinctively dug her fingers into the sand, using the sharpness of the grains to force her gaze away from the horrifying scene, pushing it temporarily from her mind to maintain some semblance of calm.
It was this sharp pain that confirmed she wasn’t dreaming.
This scene was all too real.
Indeed…
If this was a dream, then the details were far too strikingly vivid to have been conjured up from her imagination.
But no matter who looked “peacefully” lying here, aside from a frail old man, or someone like her body—infected and suffering—it would be nearly impossible not to feel a jab of sorrow in their hearts.
Those two slogans hit home even harder.
They were landmark slogans.
“Heaven is dead, the Yellow Heaven shall rise”—the cry of the Yellow Turban army.
“This year of Jiazi, the world is great”—the year the uprising erupted.
This was unquestionably the year 184 AD, right in the chaotic late Han Dynasty!
Realizing where she was, Qiao Yan understood that no matter how well-versed she was in the history of the late Han and the Three Kingdoms, being in this era was a completely different affair.
Who could blame her? This was a time of immense suffering.
Locust plagues, droughts, extreme cold, epidemics, all cycling through the century from the end of Han to the beginning of Jin, becoming the norm where “the white bones are unburied, sickness roams and people eat one another” was a regular occurrence.
But for now, she didn’t have the energy to think about all that.
She needed to figure out her current situation…
Confirming that this place had been turned into a mass grave where no one would notice her resurrection, she cautiously retreated to a spot on the mound sheltered from the wind, pulling her gaze away from her surroundings and landing it on her own hands.
Qiao Yan frowned.
From what she could see, these were clearly not the hands of a commoner.
Though a bit pale, they seemed to have been coated with a layer of grime to blend in with the crowd.
Where the mud had peeled away, the underlying skin was soft and well-cared-for.
And on these youthful hands, several scars were clearly fresh.
Even if her clothes and straw shoes looked no different from those of the unfortunate commoners around her, they couldn’t hide the fact that this body had an identity far more significant than just that of a farmer’s daughter.
Of course she’s not just some farmer’s girl; this is a finely chosen identity from the system.
“Who!”
The unexpected voice startled Qiao Yan.
But she quickly caught onto the two words in the stranger’s speech—
System.
Qiao Yan froze for a moment.
Who hasn’t read a web novel or two?
Especially since, barring some natural disaster, she should’ve been crushed and buried underground from an archaeological collapse instead of waking up in the body of a mere ten-year-old girl.
The voice didn’t mind her daze and continued, “Don’t panic, don’t panic, I am Strategist System 068.”
Strategist System?
Qiao Yan didn’t have time to ponder what that meant before a surge of memories rushed into her mind.
It was a decade’s worth of memories from the girl whose body she now inhabited.
By some crazy twist of fate, this girl was also named Qiao Yan.
Just as she suspected from the appearance of these hands, she was indeed no ordinary child—
She was the granddaughter of Qiao Xuan.
Qiao Xuan, who had been evaluated by Cao Cao as having “talents to change the world,” was not simply someone who could discern heroes; he was undeniably a renowned official in the late Han, having held positions such as Grand Minister of Ceremonies, Minister of Works, and Minister over the Masses, until illness led to his retirement from the role of Grand Commandant.
He wasn’t just a civil servant, either.
In the dying days of Emperor Huan, he once held the title of General of Pacifying the North to fend off the barbarian invaders, putting in three years of service that yielded some pretty solid results.
He was quite the achiever in both civil and military affairs.
Though he also bore the surname Qiao, Qiao Xuan and the famous Qiao sisters had no relation to him, as he only had two sons.
When his youngest was kidnapped by bandits in the capital at the age of ten, Qiao Xuan insisted that the officials in charge of the matter shouldn’t worry about his son’s safety while they cleaned up the city of rampant thieves.
As a result, the bandits were wiped out, but his youngest son paid the price.
His eldest son, Qiao Yu, happens to be the father of that “Qiao Yan.”
Qiao Xuan was a man of integrity; he once recommended a rival from his past for a high official position, but would never leverage his connections in the court to secure advantages for his son. Consequently, Qiao Yu, even nearing fifty, only managed to become the Prefect of Rencheng.
I guess it’s a tradition for the Qiao family to have weak connections, as Qiao Yu only had a daughter when he was around forty, and she had some health issues from a young age.
If that were the only issue, it wouldn’t be too bad.
The Qiao family’s estate was in Suiyang, Liang Province, and was regarded as a prominent household in Yanzhou. Years later, Qiao Zhao, who would become the Governor of Yanzhou, was a cousin to Qiao Yu.
With such a family background, raising a sickly girl shouldn’t have been a problem.
But as luck would have it, in February of the seventh year of Guanghe, Qiao Xuan fell gravely ill.
The news from Luoyang indicated that this illness was worlds apart from the one that had led to his resignation seven years ago. At over seventy, this illness left him hanging on by a thread.
With filial piety highly valued in the Han dynasty, when his aged father fell sick and was near death, Qiao Yu naturally had to go to Luoyang, bringing along his wife and daughter.
But lo and behold, that very February, the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out.
The main forces of the Yellow Turban Army split into three routes.
One was active in Ji Province under General of Heaven Zhang Jiao, another was in Nanyang led by Zhang Mancheng, and the third was in the vicinity of southern Yanzhou, around the Runan and Yingchuan regions.
As Qiao Yu traveled west with his wife and daughter, they encountered the Yellow Turbans heading south in response to the rallying call of Rebel Leader Bo Cai near Dingtao.
Meanwhile, the capital was in turmoil due to the uprising, amnesty was declared for certain factions, generals were being selected, and recruitment for soldiers was happening. The chaos in Yanzhou couldn’t be resolved in a jiffy.
Traveling lightly, Qiao Yu intended to reach the capital quickly, and with few guards, he unfortunately became a casualty of the turmoil.
With Qiao Yu dead and most of his guards slain, Qiao Yan and her mother barely escaped the encirclement.
Hoping to return to Rencheng for refuge, they encountered another group of Yellow Turbans when they reached Shanyang, under the command of Bu Ji gathering forces from Peixian to Dong Commandery.
There was no escaping now.
The Yellow Turban Army had emptied the granaries of the displaced, forcing homeless refugees to be pushed around like pieces on a chessboard, causing a massive flow of desperate people heading north.
Qiao Yan and her mother were no exception.
Under the threat of swords, they were forced to move forward, receiving only two flatbreads per day and witnessing daily chaos, an absolutely terrifying situation for a lady of a noble family who had just lost her husband.
Though they had no carts and were dressed as commoners, blending in somewhat, and with just a couple of servants for protection, their lives were momentarily safe. However, they were being pushed east instead of returning to their familiar home —
It was on their way past Daye Lake that Qiao Yan’s mother fell ill.
As she succumbed to her illness, witnessing Juye City rapidly being breached from within and becoming a stronghold for the Yellow Turbans sent chills down her spine.
Hearing her mother lament about how Juye had fallen, Qiao Yan felt that Rencheng might not be safe either.
With the cries of the Yellow Turban rebels echoing, it felt as if the Han dynasty was on the brink of collapse.
Because of this, in Qiao Yan’s memory, it seemed like not long after her mother fell ill, she was fading fast, as if there was a hole in her that kept draining her life away.
Even though she strained to hold on for her mother, she only lasted until the beginning of March.
After that, Qiao Yan herself fell sick.
…And now she woke up to the scene before her.
She slowly gathered a bit of strength and crawled toward the hillside scattered with abandoned corpses.
As she looked farther away, she could see the desolate marsh extending northward, the faint glimmer of water catching the light — a corner of Daye Lake.
This was supposed to be the spring of March.
But in the light of the setting sun, she couldn’t see a hint of spring’s beauty, only desolation and death.
It was at this moment that the Strategist System spoke up, making Qiao Yan feel that the surroundings weren’t completely silent.
【Now you should understand what the situation is. You should know why I chose this identity for you, right?】
As she gazed into the distance, Qiao Yan replied, “The Records of Wei state that Qiao Xuan once told Cao Cao, ‘I am old now, I wish to entrust my wife and children.’”
This year Qiao Xuan would die, and Qiao Yu had fallen victim to the chaos of the Yellow Turbans — the only one left to entrust was his granddaughter.
Under the promise of entrusting one’s family during the waning days of the Han, Qiao Yan found herself enveloped in this fate.
At this time, Cao Cao was marching to Yingchuan alongside Huangfu Song to quell the Yellow Turban rebels. Once the rebellion in Yingchuan was put down, they would head for Yanzhou to eradicate the Yellow Turbans in Dong Commandery.
The Strategist System, the strategist…
If she was truly to be a strategist under Cao Cao, now was indeed the best time to make contact.
But…
“Have you ever considered a little problem? Huangfu Song’s march to Dong Commandery is in June, and we still have three months to go.”
【…】
Qiao Yan knew the system could probably see the chaos surrounding her, but she still turned around in her elevated position, hoping to give the system a glimpse of the horrific scenes around.
