Hot flashes

The wound on my leg was now burning and protesting because of the long period of standing and tension.

He leaned against the cold, blue brick wall, catching his breath several times before daring to slowly straighten up. The note in his hand, bearing a reward of five hundred coins, was damp with sweat and somewhat limp.

The process of receiving the reward money also felt unreal. The quartermaster checked the slip of paper, didn't give him a second glance, and counted out a heavy string of copper coins, pushing it over.

The cool touch of the metal brought Zhou Heng back to his senses—this was his first "legal" income in this era.

He carefully tucked the money into his pocket, pressing it close to the jade clasp, as if it could bring him a tiny bit of security.

When Zhou Heng returned to Dingziying to pack his things, Wang Laowu and the others had not yet come back. Looking at his simple straw bed, Zhou Heng felt a mix of emotions.

The beatings and scoldings he endured here, the sweat he shed, the hunger he suffered, and the familiar faces of Zhang Tiezhu and Li Gou'er... all these things gave him a strange feeling of "being reluctant to leave his homeland".

But he didn't dare linger. Clutching his meager belongings, he limped toward the forward supply train.

The atmosphere in the supply corps was indeed different. It lacked the raw, life-or-death struggle of the T-shaped battalion, and instead had more of a mundane and calculating atmosphere.

He was led to a room filled with account books and assigned to work as an assistant to a drowsy old clerk.

Organizing those old, illegible, and oddly formatted records is dusty and incredibly tedious, but at least... it's safe for now.

At night, lying on the slightly dry but still hard and cold dormitory bed, Zhou Heng was exhausted but found it difficult to fall asleep.

The scene in the study during the day, the calm yet suffocating pressure, the figure whose face he never dared to look up at clearly, only remembering the voice and the imposing presence, and the question about the jade buckle on his chest... all flashed through his mind like a revolving lantern. His leg injury also throbbed with pain.

In that half-asleep, half-awake state, a strangely heavy force suddenly dragged him into the abyss.

---

That was no ordinary dream.

There is no clear narrative, only a violent indoctrination of a massive flow of information and a direct projection of strong emotions.

At first, there were countless fragments of noise: fierce arguments, vicious curses, sorrowful sighs, and the historian's cold reading of the verdict... all revolving around one name—"Xiao Jue".

The voices were filled with harsh words such as "defying etiquette and law", "mistreating the gentry", "tyrant and traitor", and "burn to death".

Then comes a flood of chaotic imagery: a black banner burning and crumbling in flames; a magnificent palace being invaded by soldiers in the dead of night;

A scroll of imperial edicts with clear characters such as "encourage farming, equalize taxes, and select virtuous officials" was smeared and covered with filthy ink.

On the high Chengtian Platform, flames soared into the sky. A tall and solitary figure in black stood amidst the fire, faceless, with only an extreme calmness and an overwhelming sense of grief and resentment at being betrayed and defamed.

The grief and resentment were so intense that they almost materialized, crashing into Zhou Heng's consciousness.

Then, the most core, cold, mechanical flow of information was etched into his cognition with overwhelming force:

[An anomaly in spacetime has been detected: 'Zhou Heng' (carrying a high-dimensional information imprint).]

[A risk of a break in a key historical causal chain has been detected: The 'Xiao Jue - Idealistic Practice Path' collapsed at the node 'Night of Cheng Tian'.]

[Consequences of the break: The historical timeline deflection exceeds the threshold, a powerful resurgence of aristocratic politics occurs, the progress of civilization is slowed, and the anchor point 'Zhou Heng', due to carrying abnormal information, cannot be compatible with this deflected spacetime and will be completely erased.]

[Emergency fix protocol activated.]

[Bound Quest Generation: Ensure the survival of the key figure 'Xiao Jue' and guide his historical path to achieve the 'Unification of the World' and 'Enlightened Ruler' endings.]

[Success: Causal chain repaired, anchor point can be safely detached and returned to original coordinates.]

[Failure: The anchor point 'Zhou Heng' was annihilated along with the deflected spacetime.]

"Ho—!"

Zhou Heng suddenly woke up with a start, sprang up from the bed, and cold sweat instantly soaked through his thin undergarment, sending shivers down his spine in the chilly morning.

He was gasping for breath, like a dying fish, his heart pounding wildly, making his ribs ache.

The details of the dream were fading rapidly, but the suffocating feeling of being forcibly bound to a mission, the ultimate fear of annihilation if it failed, and the core command to save Xiao Jue were like a red-hot branding iron, deeply imprinted on the soul.

His hands trembled as he gripped the jade clasp at his chest tightly. The warm, smooth jade now felt scalding hot to the touch.

Zhou Heng's days in the supply corps were like a bowl of porridge diluted with too much water—bland, filling, but tasteless.

Every day, he buried himself in piles of old, musty-smelling ledgers, learning from the old clerk surnamed Wu to decipher all sorts of strange measurement symbols and blurry handwriting.

The wound on my leg slowly scabbed over, and I became more agile, but the tension in my heart never eased.

The chilling command from that dream weighed on him like a heavy boulder, and the thought of "failure means annihilation" sent a chill down his spine.

Go home. This thought has never been so clear, nor so desperate.

A nearly impossible task—to elevate the powerful and intimidating Marquis of Zhenbei, whom he had only met once, to the position of the supreme ruler of the land, and he had to be a wise and benevolent monarch.

"A wise ruler..." Zhou Heng sneered inwardly, his hands moving without stopping as he carefully unfolded a worm-eaten bamboo scroll.

He himself was living like a rat in a gutter, yet he was still thinking about how to help someone else become emperor? It was so absurd that he wanted to cry.

For the first few days, he was extremely cautious, barely speaking except for necessary conversations, trying to minimize his presence. Old Wu was happy to have some free time, basically treating him like he wasn't there, except when assigning tasks.

The turning point came when he began to organize a batch of bamboo slips containing recently delivered grain and fodder.

The way the records were kept made his temples throb: the time sequence was chaotic, the categories were mixed, and the records of the same batch of grain entering and leaving the warehouse were scattered in different volumes, making verification and comparison extremely troublesome.

It took him half a day to barely sort out the transaction details for three days, an infuriatingly low efficiency.

"This...it's giving me a headache," he couldn't help but mutter to himself.