A resurgence of the late Ming Dynasty, starting with a trillion-dollar clone.

In the winter of 1628, in Majia Village, Qishui County, Huangzhou Prefecture, Huguang Province.

The snowfall was heavier than in previous years. Although the Yangtze River was not frozen over, the tributary Ba River had already formed a thin layer of ice.

Ma Sanbao squatted in front of the stove adding firewood, the firelight dancing on his rough face.

Li sat on the kang (a heated brick bed), sewing a small garment in her hands—the fabric was coarse cotton cloth bought at the market, dyed in ordinary indigo blue.

"This baby is really fussy." Li gently stroked her swollen belly, her face showing a mixture of weariness and tenderness typical of pregnant women. "He kicked until the wee hours last night."

Ma Sanbao turned around and grinned: "It must be a boy, he's so strong."

"Isn't a girl good enough?" Li gave him a reproachful look as her needle and thread moved through the fabric. "As long as they are safe and healthy, both boys and girls are precious to us."

Ma Sanbao didn't reply, and turned to look out the window.

The snow was still falling, weighing down the thatched eaves.

He was an ordinary farmer in Majia Village. His ancestors had produced a scholar, but that was a matter of his great-grandfather's generation.

Now the family has three mu of paddy fields and two mu of dry land. In good years, it's enough to pay taxes and make a living. In bad years, they have to go to town to do odd jobs.

This winter is particularly difficult. News of the famine in northern Shaanxi has reached Hubei and Hunan, and rice prices are rising three times a day.

The village elders said this was a sign of a change of dynasty—the Tianqi Emperor had only been dead for a year when the new emperor, Chongzhen, ascended the throne, and the reign title had just been changed when heaven and earth began to act in disharmony.

"I heard the county town is recruiting soldiers," Ma Sanbao suddenly said. "The war in Liaodong is tense, and the Later Jin are causing a lot of trouble."

Li's hand trembled, the needle pricked her finger, and a bead of blood seeped out: "You don't mean to think about going, do you?"

"What nonsense are you talking about?" Ma Sanbao stood up, took a handful of ash from the earthenware pot, and pressed it onto her wound. "If I leave, what will happen to you and the child? Besides..." He lowered his voice, "When has the imperial court ever paid its soldiers in full? They're all going to their deaths."

The room fell silent, broken only by the crackling of the firewood.

Inside Li's womb, the fetus, infused with an extraordinary being, was undergoing subtle changes in consciousness.

The fetus's brain development has entered a critical period.

Once the neural tube has closed, the cerebral hemispheres begin to differentiate, and neurons proliferate at a rate of 250,000 per minute.

Ma Yongsheng's seeds of consciousness—those information units embedded in every neuron—are currently in a state of deep dormancy.

But they are not completely still.

Just as seeds buried underground can sense seasonal changes, these information units are also monitoring the development of the fetal nervous system.

Developmental stage: 28th week of fetal development

Brain weight: Approximately 300 grams

Total number of neurons: approximately 280 billion (reaching human level)

Synaptic connections: Beginning to form, speed: 15000 per second

Consciousness seed state: dormant, running in monitoring mode.

Occasionally, a few isolated information units will be activated.

When Ms. Li consumed fish soup rich in DHA, the neurons in the fetal brain related to cognitive development received more nutrients.

Several information units briefly awoke and emitted weak signals:

Adequate nutrient intake.

The development of basic cognitive modules accelerated by 12%.

While Ma Sanbao was reading in the house—it was a copy of "Thousand Family Poems" left by his father, the pages of which were yellowed and torn—the fetus in Li's womb would be unusually quiet.

Sound waves are transmitted through the amniotic fluid, and although they are indistinct, those phonological rhythms trigger the early development of language processing areas.

More information units were activated:

Language stimulus detection.

Phonological pattern analysis in progress...

Detected: Middle Chinese phonology, Mandarin variant, some entering tone characters are preserved.

Language module preload progress: 0.3%

The strongest activation occurs on the night of a full moon.

That day was the fifteenth of the twelfth lunar month. The snow had stopped, and the moonlight made the snow-covered ground look silvery white.

Unable to sleep, Ms. Li got up and sat by the window.

She suddenly felt a strange throbbing in her abdomen—not fetal movement, but some kind of deeper resonance.

Unbeknownst to her, at that moment, thousands of information units in the fetus's brain simultaneously awakened for 0.3 seconds.

They "saw" the moonlight filtering through the mother's abdominal tissues, amniotic fluid, and uterine wall.

The wavelengths, intensities, and polarization states of these photons were precisely measured and compared with lunar orbital parameters stored in a database.

Lunar orbital parameter matching accuracy: 99.7%

Earth's rotation period matching accuracy: 99.9%

Time calibration confirmed: December 15, 1628 AD, with an error range of ±3 days.

Historical event database index...

Matching events: 1. In the first year of the Chongzhen Emperor's reign, Shaanxi suffered a severe drought, leading to widespread famine and uprisings; 2. The Dutch East India Company occupied Taiwan; 3. Huang Taiji ascended the throne of the Later Jin Dynasty…

The flood of information rushes through the still-developing cerebral cortex of the fetus, but is immediately blocked by inhibitory mechanisms.

The seeds have re-entered dormancy, leaving only a faint echo:

Spacetime coordinates confirmed. Host identity confirmed.

The awakening countdown has been recalibrated.

Ms. Li felt the fetus calm down.

She touched her belly and softly hummed a nursery rhyme her mother had taught her:

"The moonlight shines on the underworld, shrimp boy, please fall into bed obediently..."

As the song played, the last bit of activity in those information units dissipated, like a stone thrown into a deep pool; after the ripples subsided, the pool returned to calm.

The delivery began on the second day of the second lunar month, the day the dragon raises its head.

That morning, Ma Sanbao was awakened by Li's groans.

He scrambled off the kang (a heated brick bed), not even bothering to put on his shoes, and rushed out of the room to call for the midwife.

The midwife, Aunt Chen, was an experienced old woman in the village. When she arrived, Li was already sweating profusely from the pain.

"The baby is in the right position, it should be a smooth delivery," said Aunt Chen after the examination, but her brows furrowed slightly, "It's just that this baby... is too quiet."

Indeed, unlike the frequent fetal movements before, the fetus was unusually calm during labor.

Ms. Li was even worried at one point, but the regular contractions coming from her womb proved that life was still active.

Ma Sanbao was kicked out of the house.

The spring chill lingered in the air as he squatted under the eaves, his fingers unconsciously picking at the plaster on the wall.

Inside the house came his wife's suppressed cries of pain, each one like a knife stabbing into his heart.

Time passed slowly, from dawn to noon, and then until the sun began to set.

Aunt Chen came out once, her face grave: "The cervix is ​​dilating slowly, and the baby's head is big."

Ma Sanbao's face turned deathly pale: "Protect the master..."

"Stop talking such bad luck!" Aunt Chen glared at him. "Go boil some water and prepare plenty of clean cloths."

Inside the room, Li's consciousness ebbed and flowed in waves of pain.

In a fleeting moment, she seemed to see a strange sight—a frozen ocean, enormous stars, and countless identical faces.

The illusion flashed by, and the excruciating pain pulled her back to reality.

The fetus, struggling to move through the birth canal, is currently undergoing its first major test of consciousness.

External pressure: birth canal compression, peak pressure 85 kPa

Hypoxic state: intermittent, with blood oxygen saturation dropping as low as 45%.

Stress hormone levels: Cortisol surge, adrenaline release

These extreme conditions triggered the protective mechanism of the seed of consciousness.

Tens of thousands of information units are activated simultaneously, releasing trace amounts of neuromodulatory substances:

Release: Endogenous antioxidants that protect neurons from hypoxia damage.

Release: Neurotrophic factors promote synaptic stability under stress.

Release: Mild analgesic peptides, reducing fetal stress response.

The fetal heartbeat remained stable.

When the head finally passed through the narrowest part of the birth canal, Aunt Chen exclaimed with delight, "I can see the head! Push a little harder!"

As dusk fell, a cry broke the silence of Majia Village.

"It's a boy!" Aunt Chen's voice was filled with weary joy.

Ma Sanbao rushed into the house and saw his wife's pale but smiling face, and the crumpled, blood-covered baby in her arms.

The baby did not cry continuously like a typical newborn.

He cried a few times and then stopped, his eyes slightly opening a crack—newborns should have blurry vision, but Ma Sanbao had a strange feeling that his gaze was unusually clear, even carrying a certain… scrutiny?

"This child has bright eyes," Aunt Chen noticed as well, "like he's quite sensible."

Li weakly took the child and gently stroked his little face.

The baby turned its head, followed the direction of the breast, and instinctively began to suckle.

Deep within the infant's brain, the monitoring system of the seeds of consciousness is updating its status:

Birth procedure completed

Time: March 6, 1629, 3:45 PM

Physical condition assessment: Good. Score: 9/10

Nervous system infrastructure completeness: 98.7%

Consciousness seed integrity: 99.99%

Awakening countdown resets...

Expected time for full awakening: approximately 25-30 years later

Current mode: Deep hibernation, with basic physiological monitoring running.

The baby, having finished feeding, let out a small burp, closed his eyes, and fell into a deep sleep.

Ma Sanbao sat on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), looking at his wife and children, his eyes welling up with tears.

He suddenly remembered something, took out a small cloth bag from his pocket, and opened it to find a silver lock engraved with "Long Live to a Hundred Years"—this was the only valuable item left by his mother in the house.

"Let's give the child a name," Li said softly.

Ma Sanbao pondered for a moment. Outside the window, the early spring sunset was painting the sky red.

"Let's name him... Changsheng," he said. "Ma Changsheng. I don't ask for great wealth or high status, I only ask for peace and longevity."

Madam Li nodded and stroked the baby's soft hair: "Changsheng, Ma Changsheng... a good name."

Unbeknownst to them, this name shared an astonishing coincidence with the being dormant deep within the infant's consciousness.

Ma Changsheng. Ma Yongsheng.

The difference of just one word seems like a joke played by fate, or a foreshadowing deliberately left by time.

Ma Changsheng's infancy was no different from that of ordinary children—at least on the surface.

He would be hungry and cry, wet his diaper, and seek warmth in Li's arms.

But Aunt Chen and other experienced women in the village noticed some subtle abnormalities.

"This child is too quiet," Aunt Chen said to Li. "When ordinary children are awake, they always like to move their hands and feet, but he often stares at one spot, as if he is thinking about something."

Li didn't take it to heart: "Isn't it better to be quiet? It'll save you trouble."

"It's not that it's bad..." Aunt Chen hesitated, "It's just that it feels... strange."

There were indeed some "strange" things. When Ma Changsheng was three months old, Ma Sanbao was holding him in the yard sunbathing when a sparrow landed on a jujube tree branch.

The baby's gaze immediately locked onto the bird, its head turning precisely with the sparrow's hops, as if calculating its trajectory.

Ma Sanbao laughed and said, "This kid will definitely be a good hunter in the future."

Unbeknownst to him, at that moment, the cluster of neurons in the baby's brain responsible for visual tracking and motion prediction was activated at a level thirty-seven times higher than that of babies of the same age.

At six months old, Ma Changsheng began to babble.

His pronunciation was exceptionally clear; even though it was just simple words like "father" and "mother," his intonation was surprisingly accurate.

To Li's surprise, the child seemed to be able to distinguish different tones of voice—when she asked "Are you hungry?" in a questioning tone, Ma Changsheng would respond with different babbling sounds.

On his first birthday, Ma Changsheng took his first steps.

Without any tentative steps, he stood up from the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), walked steadily to the center of the room, and sat down, as if he had completed a predetermined task.

Ma Sanbao was both surprised and delighted. He ran to the village entrance, bought half a jin of liquor, and invited Aunt Chen to his home for a celebratory meal.

Within this young body, certain fundamental modules of the seed of consciousness are being activated gradually as planned:

Motion control module: 15% activated. Achieved: autonomous walking, fine grasping.

Language processing module: Activated at 8%. Achieved: Monosyllabic word comprehension and pronunciation, intonation recognition.

Social cognition module: 3% activated. Achieved: Facial expression recognition, basic empathy response.

However, all of these activations are subject to strict limitations.

Ma Changsheng showed a slightly faster development speed than his peers, but he was still in the category of "prodigy" rather than "monster".

In the village, some children don't walk until they're a year and a half old, and it's not uncommon for some to start talking early.

The real anomaly occurred in the summer when I was two years old.

That year there was a severe drought.

From May to July, not a drop of rain fell.

The water level of the Ba River has dropped to its lowest level in a century, causing cracks in the rice paddies and yellowing rice seedlings.

Led by their clan chief, the villagers of Majia Village went to the Dragon King Temple to pray for rain.

Offerings were laid out on the table, incense and candles burned all day, yet the sky remained cloudless.

Ma Changsheng went along too.

He was held in Li's arms as he watched the adults kneel, pray, and kowtow.

His gaze, however, passed over the statue and landed on the painted decorations on the temple's beams and pillars—a map of the Twenty-Eight Mansions, crudely painted, but with the constellations roughly in the correct positions.

Suddenly, he stretched out his little hand, pointed to the roof beam, and clearly said: "Horn, Neck, Root, Room, Heart, Tail, Winnowing Basket."

The sound wasn't loud, but it was exceptionally clear in the quiet temple.

Everyone was stunned.

Mrs. Li hurriedly covered the child's mouth, saying, "Don't talk nonsense!"

The clan chief, Old Master Ma, walked over shakily, squatted down, and looked at Ma Changsheng: "Child, what did you say?"

Ma Changsheng blinked, seemingly realizing that he had said something he shouldn't have.

He lowered his head and said nothing more.

But the old man had already heard it clearly.

He stood up, looked around at everyone, his expression grave: "These are the Seven Constellations of the Eastern Azure Dragon... How could a two-year-old child know this?"

The village schoolteacher was invited. He brought over a tattered copy of "The Song of Astronomy," pointed to the star chart, and asked Ma Changsheng, "Child, do you recognize these?"

Ma Changsheng looked at the simple, line-drawn star charts, hesitated for a moment, and then pointed to one of them: "The Big Dipper."

Then it points to another one: "The Weaver Girl".

Another one: "River Drum II".

With each one he pointed to, the man's expression grew more shocked.

These constellation names are usually learned by children who start recognizing characters around seven or eight years old. How could a two-year-old child, who has never been exposed to books, know them?

"A child prodigy! He's a child prodigy!" The man's beard trembled with excitement. "Ma Sanbao, your son is extraordinary!"

The news quickly spread throughout the village and then to neighboring villages.

Some say it's the reincarnation of the God of Literature, some say it's the smoke rising from the Ma family's ancestral graves, and others say it might be some kind of supernatural phenomenon—how can a two-year-old recognize the stars?

That night, Ma Changsheng developed a fever.

Li applied a wet towel to his forehead, tears streaming down her face.

Ma Sanbao called in a doctor, who, after taking his pulse, said, "It's nothing serious; he's just been frightened and is feeling uneasy."

Indeed, in the delirium of fever, Ma Changsheng's brain was undergoing dramatic adjustments.

Error: Basic Astronomy Knowledge Module Activated Prematurely

Triggering condition: The visual stimulus (star map) matches the database with a degree exceeding a threshold.

Solution: Emergency suppression. Activate the memory blurring procedure.

Side effects: short-term fever, confusion, and partial loss of recent memory.

The high fever lasted all night.

The next morning, when Ma Changsheng woke up, his fever had subsided, and his eyes regained the innocent look of a child.

Li asked him, "Changsheng, do you remember what we talked about at the temple yesterday?"

Ma Changsheng shook his head blankly.

When the teacher tried again, holding up the star chart and asking questions, the child just looked at it curiously and stopped pointing out any constellations.

"He's delirious from the fever," the gentleman said regretfully. "What a waste of that potential."

The villagers' discussions gradually subsided.

It's not uncommon for children to have brain damage from fevers. It's a pity when a child prodigy turns back into an ordinary child, but it also brings a sense of relief—anything too abnormal always makes people uneasy.

Only Ma Sanbao and Li would occasionally think about their son's behavior that day when the night was quiet.

Sometimes, Madam Li would stroke her son's head and softly ask, "Chang Sheng, what is your background?"

Ma Changsheng simply nestled in her arms without saying a word.

Deep within her consciousness, the system log updated a record:

Event: Premature Module Activation Incident

Processing result: Successfully suppressed; no core presence exposed.

Adjustments: Increase activation threshold and strengthen inhibition mechanism.

The next key module activation time is expected to be 6-8 years later.

Current age: 2 years and 3 months

Awakening Countdown: Approximately 23 years

When Ma Changsheng was three years old, the outside world was undergoing dramatic changes.

The peasant uprising in Shaanxi has spread like wildfire.

The names Wang Jiayin, Wang Ziyong, and Gao Yingxiang began to appear in official documents and folk rumors.

Although Huguang was relatively stable, taxes increased year by year, and corvée labor became more and more frequent.

Ma Sanbao was conscripted to repair the county town's city wall, and he was gone for three months.

When I came back, I had lost weight and brought back half a bag of brown rice and news from the outside world.

"The bandits are almost in Henan," he said to Li in a low voice. "The people in the county town are in a state of panic, and wealthy families are starting to migrate south."

Holding Ma Changsheng, Li asked worriedly, "What should we do?"

"What can we do?" Ma Sanbao smiled bitterly. "How can farmers survive without the land? We can only leave it to fate."

Ma Changsheng sat on his mother's lap, listening quietly.

He couldn't understand the specific meanings of words like "bandits" and "taxes," but he could sense the anxiety in his parents' words.

That anxiety about the future pierced the barrier of the young mind, triggering a certain monitoring program in the seed of consciousness:

Environmental threat assessment: Medium to high

Social stability: declining

Survival probability: Relatively safe within 5 years barring major unforeseen events.

Recommendation: Accelerate the learning of basic survival skills

From that day on, Ma Changsheng showed an extraordinary interest in practical skills.

He learned from his mother to identify wild vegetables—which are edible, which are poisonous, and which can be used as medicine.

To Li's surprise, her son could remember what she taught him after just one lesson, and even point out her occasional mistakes: "Mother, this isn't purslane; the leaf shape is wrong."

He also went to the fields with his father. Although he was too young to do the work, he would squat on the edge of the field and watch.

When Ma Sanbao was plowing the field, he would ask, "Dad, why is this patch of land plowed deep, and that one shallow?"

Ma Sanbao casually explained, "Different soil types result in different fertility."

Ma Changsheng nodded, picked up a handful of soil with his small hand, and examined it carefully—this action made Ma Sanbao laugh: "You little rascal, you're just like an old farmer."

Unbeknownst to him, his son's brain was analyzing the soil's texture, color, and moisture content, comparing it with limited agricultural knowledge in a database.

What surprised the couple the most was an incident that happened when Ma Changsheng was four years old.

That autumn, the village was plagued by rats.

The grain was stolen, the clothes were chewed up, and even several of the newly hatched chicks were dragged away.

The villagers tried various methods: raising cats, setting traps, and using poison bait, but none of them worked well.

One day, while Ma Changsheng was playing in the yard, he saw a mouse crawl out of a hole in the corner of the wall.

He stared at the hole for a long time, then ran to find his father.

"Dad, the rat hole has more than one exit."

Ma Sanbao was mending fishing nets, not even looking up: "Hmm, those rats are cunning; they always have a way out."

"What if we find all the entrances, seal most of them, and leave one as a trap?"

Ma Sanbao paused in his work. He looked up at his son, a four-year-old boy with bright, earnest eyes.

"How...did you come up with that?"

Ma Changsheng tilted his head, as if he was thinking about how to answer.

In fact, the basic logic module of the seed of consciousness had just provided an optimization solution, which he instinctively said.

"That's...that's what I think."

Ma Sanbao tried it following his son's advice.

Sure enough, they found another hidden entrance under the woodpile behind the house.

He sealed the hole in the corner of the wall and set a trap at the entrance of the woodpile hole, catching a nest of five rats the next day.

When the news spread, villagers came to ask for advice.

Ma Sanbao stammered and finally said, "Chang Sheng was just talking nonsense, it was just a coincidence."

But new rumors began to circulate in the village: the Ma family's child, although he no longer recognized the constellations, was still more intelligent than the average person.

Grandpa Ma came to see Ma Changsheng once, leaning on his cane. He patted his head and said, "Take good care of yourself. Maybe you can pass the imperial examination and bring honor to your ancestors."

Official rank and fame. This was the only way for farm children to change their fate.

That night, Li said to Ma Sanbao, "When Changsheng is a little older, let's send him to a private school. No matter how poor we are, we will support his education."

Ma Sanbao looked at his sleeping son and nodded.

Outside the window, autumn insects chirped.

Moonlight spilled into the courtyard, illuminating the being who had once witnessed the annihilation of stars and the battles of black holes, now merely a farm boy, slowly stepping onto the life trajectory of this era amidst his parents' expectations.

Deep within his consciousness, the diary added a new entry:

Environmental adaptability: Good

Social integration level: moderate to high

Basic survival skills acquisition progress: 42%

The next phase will focus on: literacy, understanding of social structures, and observation of historical events.

Current age: 4 years and 1 months

Distance to full awakening: Approximately 21 years

Ma Changsheng turned over and murmured a vague sentence in his sleep.

Li leaned closer to listen, and vaguely heard something like, "...integration...stable..."

She shook her head, thinking the child was talking in his sleep, and tucked him in.

Outside, the Yangtze River flows silently eastward.

The river of history is also surging forward, carrying everyone of this era—emperors and farmers, generals and refugees, scholars and the illiterate—towards that destined, magnificent, yet suffering future.

Ma Changsheng, or rather Ma Yongsheng, will awaken in this future.

At that time, he will face a completely unfamiliar world, yet one that bears traces of his memories.

His first priority was to live to see that day.