The Idle Man of Zhenguan Intercepts Wu Zetian at the Start

The tenth year of Zhenguan, on the seventh day of the first lunar month.

The snow in Chang'an City had not yet melted, leaving it a vast expanse of white.

Countless red lanterns hung along the streets, and vendors and pedestrians moved about, creating a bustling scene.

at this time.

In the underground death row of the Dali Temple, Changsun Dan lay sprawled on a bed of straw, a straw dangling from his mouth. The cold breath he exhaled formed a blue mist in front of him.

"Li Er, Li Er, you are supposed to be one of the greatest emperors in history, yet you are so petty."

"All I did was steal one of your betrothed concubines, and you've locked me up in this death row for twenty-seven days. Is it really necessary?"

"If it weren't for me, in a few decades, your Li family's empire would have been changed to the Wu family's."

Liu Tiezhu and Xu Daniu were prison guards who were responsible for guarding Changsun Dan.

Upon hearing this, the two exchanged a glance and couldn't help but shiver.

Everyone says that the sixth son of the Changsun family is absurd, lecherous, weak, and incompetent.

Not only did he address His Majesty by his childhood name, but he also cursed the Li Tang dynasty. If this were to reach His Majesty's ears...

Liu Tiezhu steadied himself, his face beaming with a smile that also held a hint of pleading:

"Young master, please spare us! Please don't say that again."

"If word gets out, you may not be afraid of death, but we are of lowly status and will all be buried with you."

Xu Daniu quickly stood up, picked up a broken bowl, and wiped it with his dirty sleeve.

He poured a full bowl of wine and respectfully handed it over the fence.

"Please be careful with your words, young man."

Changsun Dan jumped up from the straw mat, took the wine bowl, and gulped down a large mouthful. As soon as the wine entered his throat, a sour, astringent, and spicy taste rushed straight to his head:

"Ahem, don't you know kids shouldn't drink alcohol? Fine, I won't hold it against you."

After saying that, he took out a rolled-up white cloth from his pocket.

It's obvious that it was torn off his own prison uniform.

Changsun Dan handed the white cloth to Liu Tiezhu and said lazily:

"I'm tired of staying here. Please help me deliver this piece of cloth to the Grand Historian Li Chunfeng."

Liu Tiezhu took the white cloth into his hands:

"Young master, you wouldn't be trying to trick me, would you? I have an eighty-year-old mother to support and an eighteen-year-old brother to raise..."

Changsun Dan spat and poked at the charcoal stove with the fire tongs. A string of sparks shot up but immediately turned to ashes.

"Don't worry, I'm only fourteen years old and don't want to die. Considering that you two still have some conscience, I'll make sure you have a rich and prosperous future after I get out."

Liu Tiezhu and his companion were naturally skeptical, but after spending a month together, they found that this gentle young master was quite different from the rumors circulating about him.

Despite being on death row at such a young age, he remained calm and composed, seemingly carefree.

If he is the most incompetent fool in Chang'an, cowardly as a mouse, then there is no one in the world who is brave.

What he did was practically rubbing His Majesty's face in the ground.

Liu Tiezhu sighed inwardly and cupped his hands in a respectful gesture:

"I will personally deliver it to the Grand Historian."

Changsun Dan gulped down a few more mouthfuls of wine, finished the large bowl, and, too lazy to say anything more, lay back down on the straw mat, waving his hand with his back to the two men.

Liu Tiezhu held the white cloth in his hand. Although the dungeon was cold, it felt like holding a red-hot iron.

Xu Daniu tugged at Liu Tiezhu's sleeve, and the two walked to the corner of the wall. Once they were sure Changsun Dan couldn't see them, they whispered:

"To be honest, this man committed such a serious crime, and His Majesty was in a fit of anger at the time, yet he didn't kill him. Perhaps things really did change."

Liu Tiezhu nodded and lowered his voice:

"In the end, Young Master Dan is, after all, a descendant of the Changsun family. As long as it's not treason..."

"I'm afraid the Wu family won't let him go... and there are also members of the Changsun family who won't tolerate him..."

Xu Daniu quickly made a shushing gesture.

He and Liu Tiezhu were both veterans of the Prince of Qin's mansion, and they were well aware of the sordid affairs of aristocratic families.

However, the longer the situation dragged on, the more dangerous it became for him and Liu Tiezhu to be caught in the middle.

"Old Liu, I'm more inclined to believe Young Master Dan. Those who enter the Dali Temple's death row are all either rich or powerful; how many of them treat us like human beings?"

"Only this young master Tan, although he has a carefree personality, I can tell from his eyes that he really doesn't regard us as inferiors."

Liu Tiezhu tucked the white cloth into his sleeve, his eyes resolute, as if he had made a great decision:

"We absolutely cannot harm Young Master Dan. You stay here and guard this place. I'll take the items to the Grand Historian right away. It's better than us both waiting to die here."

Changsun Dan's mind was hazy at this moment, and he drifted off to sleep in a daze. Memories of his past life surged into his dreams like a tide.

In his previous life, his name was Sun Dan.

They are busy every day in the National Library, protecting and collecting various documents and classics, day after day, year after year.

Back in the day, I graduated from a top-tier 985 university, and I was so full of vigor and ambition.

In the end, they were nothing more than cattle and horses.

I worked diligently in the library for fifteen years. Every day, besides classifying books and repairing ancient books, I was always reading various books.

Although they won't starve, they can't escape this vast and inescapable literary prison.

"Sun Dan, take a look at this set of old Tang books."

My colleague Xu Zuwei came over excitedly, carrying a pile of thread-bound ancient books:

"The Tang Dynasty hemp paper and pine soot ink have been carbon-14 and spectral analysis done, confirming that it is undoubtedly an ancient book from the Later Jin Dynasty."

Sun Dan also became interested and carefully turned the pages of the book. For some reason, his mind suddenly became confused.

The words in the book seemed to float on the pages.

Sun Dan rubbed his eyes hard a few times, and finally the hallucination disappeared, and he returned to normal.

After glancing at it twice, Sun Dan frowned slightly and said calmly:

"Fake."

Xu Zuwei impatiently adjusted his thick glasses:

"What do you mean it's fake! I don't believe you're any better than scientific testing."

Sun Dan gently stroked the pages with his fingers, then sniffed them hard, muttering something under his breath:

"Strange, the paper and ink are genuine."

Then he pointed to the arrangement of words on the page, looked up at Xu Zuwei:

"Look at the size and spacing of each character. Aren't they incredibly uniform? This is movable type printing. The Later Jin Dynasty didn't have this technology."

He then pointed to one of the characters: "And this character '渊', shouldn't it be the traditional character '渊'?"

Xu Zuwei angrily exclaimed, "Damn it!"

At that moment, Sun Dan felt a slight pain in his fingertip. Looking down, he saw a silver silverfish gnawing at his finger with a smug look on its face.

A small bead of blood appeared on the fingertip.

Sun Dan quickly withdrew his hand, but blood still dripped onto the yellowed pages of the book.

Sun Dan felt a wave of dizziness. The words on the pages of the book came alive again, jumping and tumbling, constantly flowing into his limbs and bones.

"Sun Dan, Sun Dan... Help! Someone, help me!"

Xu Zuwei's terrified cries for help came into his ears.

Sun Dan felt numb all over, his blood rushed to his head, and he spat out a mouthful of blood.

Bright red blood, like plum blossoms, splattered onto the withered yellow pages, instantly spreading out.

"...Holy crap...silverfish...poisonous..."

These are the last two words Sun Dan left for this world.

He died at the age of thirty-eight.

When Sun Dan woke up again, he was lying disheveled in the Yuxian Tower in Pingkang Ward.

He was thin and weak, and his head was filled with memories that were not his own—he was reborn as Changsun Dan, the sixth son of Changsun Wuji, and the most famous good-for-nothing in Chang'an.

A group of young women were running around in a panic, while an old man who looked like a doctor was taking his pulse and shaking his head and sighing.

Sun Dan closed his eyes and mentally sorted through Changsun Dan's fragmented memories.

Today was supposed to be the day when Wang Susu, a talented woman from Yuxian Tower, would gather with friends through literature, play the zither, and perform dances, but Fang Yi'ai dragged me here to join in the fun.

Unexpectedly, the two were both clueless, knowing nothing about poetry and literature, and were just joining in the fun to make up the numbers.

When Wang Susu posed a question, neither of them could answer it. Occasionally, they could piece together a few lines of poetry, but they were all complete nonsense.

After several rounds of drinking contests, Fang Yi'ai got drunk and collapsed, while Changsun Dan died suddenly.

"The sixth young master of the Changsun family is indeed the number one good-for-nothing in Chang'an City, hahahaha."

"He's utterly ignorant, yet he dared to embarrass himself at Jade Immortal Pavilion. Now look what's happened, he's lost his life!"

"Brother Wang is absolutely right. It's just that such an incompetent person died at Jade Immortal Tower, which only brought bad luck to Master Su Su."

Various jeers rose and fell, extremely jarring.

Wang Susu's expression was aloof, her eyes filled with disdain.

He glanced at Changsun Dan indifferently. This man was ignorant and utterly vulgar. He could even drink himself to death. How ridiculous!

Just then, Changsun Dan slowly opened his eyes.

Sun Dan's soul was completely resurrected in the body of this fourteen-year-old boy.