A dream.

A bizarre and fantastical dream.

After drinking himself into a stupor and falling asleep at his desk, Han Qian found himself in this bizarre and fantastical dream, seemingly experiencing a life completely different from his current one.

Iron boxes with four wheels running faster than purple-maned horses, giant iron birds packed with people soaring through the sky…

Towering skyscrapers reaching into the clouds crowding the earth…

Inside palm-sized metal boxes, tiny people wearing strange and peculiar costumes performing plays…

What the hell were all these things?

Han Qian, known for his violent temper, had no idea why he would have such a strange dream. It was as if he were trapped in a bizarre world completely different from the present era.

Han Qian struggled to wake up, but an indescribable numbness controlled his body. As his eyelids twitched, the bizarre and fantastical dream seemed to be struck hard by an iron hammer, instantly shattering into pieces.

What followed felt like sharp metal objects stabbing into his heart and violently stirring.

Damn, it hurt so much.

He had only drunk half a pot of wine—how could he feel this terrible?

The intense pain felt like it was tearing his three ethereal souls and seven corporeal spirits from his body and ripping them to shreds. The pain made Han Qian want to roar, but a breath caught in his throat—he couldn’t make a sound no matter how hard he tried!

In the room, there were sounds of rummaging through boxes and cabinets, like the sound of wind, or perhaps the window was actually open and wind was blowing in, rustling the pages of books.

Han Qian struggled to open his eyes.

“Huh?” A suppressed exclamation came from not far away.

“What’s wrong?”

“The Han family’s Seventh Young Master just moved?”

“The wine was laced with Phantom Poison Powder given by the Madam. This fellow clearly looked like he had died suddenly from illness just now, his breath had already ceased—how could he still move? Don’t let your imagination run wild…”

A man and a woman were whispering in the room, searching for something. The woman’s voice sounded familiar.

The intense pain in his chest made it difficult for him to think. He didn’t understand what these two were talking about, but from their tone, he could tell they had no goodwill toward him whatsoever.

“Seventh Young Master…”

A series of hurried, light footsteps came from outside the house.

Someone outside the courtyard called to him in a suppressed voice, seemingly sensing something unusual in this room but afraid to disturb what was happening inside, not daring to shout loudly.

“Could it be that Qing Yun is confused from sleep and dreaming? How could there possibly be a woman’s voice in the Young Master’s room at this hour? We’d better not go in. With the Young Master’s temper, if we really wake him up, there’ll be another round of cursing—it’s really unbearable.” The person outside the courtyard hesitated, unwilling to enter.

“Someone’s coming, let’s go…”

The two people in the room conferred in low voices, then the sound of the window being pushed open followed.

Han Qian opened his eyes. His vision was blurry at first, and his consciousness hadn’t fully cleared. He vaguely saw two shadowy figures climbing out the window one after another, like geckos.

The smaller figure behind glanced back as she leaped through the window, her eyes meeting Han Qian’s. Not expecting that Han Qian was actually not dead, her stunningly beautiful face showed an expression of shock.

Black form-fitting outfit, wrapping her petite figure without a single gap, yet this palm-sized, fair little face was like a lotus flower blooming under the moonlight, giving one a breathtaking sensation.

Yao Xishui!

Why was she dressed like this?

At this moment, Han Qian recalled what had happened yesterday.

Yesterday was the forty-seventh day since his father Han Daoxun had confined him to the Autumn Lake Mountain Villa to cultivate his character and temperament. His mood was irritable and violent beyond measure. He had taken out his frustration on the maid Qing Yun, kicking her twice and driving her out, but the courtyard gate was locked from the outside by family guards, so he couldn’t escape.

He was sitting in the study feeling stifled and angry when, unexpectedly, Yao Xishui suddenly came to visit. She walked into the study and even had someone prepare wine to drink and make merry with him.

With a beautiful companion, her Wu dialect soft and sweet in his ears, even though the Rouge Intoxication from the Evening Red Pavilion tasted slightly sour and bitter, Han Qian hadn’t paid it any mind.

But after just a few cups, taking advantage of his drunkenness, his hand had barely begun to boldly reach into Yao Xishui’s clothing when he passed out in a drunken stupor…

Last night when she entered the room to drink, Yao Xishui had been wearing purple silk robes. After drinking, her beautiful face was flushed red as if dyed, and under the lamplight and moonlight, her heavenly beauty was intoxicating. But the Yao Xishui before his eyes now wore black form-fitting clothes, like a female thief of the night. Seeing him open his eyes, she still looked shocked?

Probably hearing the people outside the courtyard approaching, Yao Xishui crouched on the windowsill hesitating for a moment, then her body, like a fragile feather, dissolved into the deep purple velvet-like darkness of night.

The deep purple night outside the window truly gave one an eerie feeling—so eerie that Han Qian suspected he hadn’t actually woken from his dream.

The intense stabbing pain now seemed to recede slightly like a tide.

Han Qian’s confused consciousness cleared. He saw his body sprawled across a desk with dark luster and delicate grain placed facing the window. His numb limbs transmitted waves of convulsive pain.

Han Qian gasped violently, like a fish pulled from water.

The stabbing pain in his chest gave him an irrepressible sense of suffocation, making it impossible for him to struggle out of the dream realm, as if that bizarre and fantastical dream world was the true water, the true rivers and streams on which he depended for survival.

On the desk lay an open sheet of rice paper, its ends held down by bronze dragon-shaped paperweights. Several lines written in clerical script, the ink not yet dry, penetrated through the back of the paper. Several thread-bound books lay scattered in one corner of the desk, and a fine wolf-hair brush rested on an inkstone.

An ancient bronze lamp stood beside the desk, its beast-foot lamp stand lifelike, as if a primordial demon beast truly extended a slender, scaly foot from the void, stepping on the smooth polished stone floor beside the desk. In the lotus-shaped lamp bowl, the oil was half-shallow, and a wick rope as thick as a pinky finger burned, casting reddish bright light onto the desk…

If this bronze lamp were taken out for auction, it would certainly set collectors rushing to acquire it.

Auction?

What a strange word!

Han Qian was shocked by this word that had intruded into his mind.

In that bizarre and fantastical dream world, “auction” was an utterly ordinary word, so familiar and intimate, but now that he had awakened, why was he still thinking about everything before him with the mindset from the dream realm?

What kind of dream was this exactly?

Why did this dream feel so real—so real that it made him suspect everything before his eyes was actually the dream?

Enduring the intense headache, Han Qian struggled to piece together those fragmented dream shards.

The dream realm was the world a thousand years after the passage of time. The emperors, generals, and ministers he was familiar with had long since vanished. People of lowly status like singing girls and entertainers had become performing stars or artists receiving universal attention, yet they still couldn’t escape the fate of being toyed with by the powerful and wealthy.

Humanity’s understanding of the world was far more vast and boundless than he could imagine. Even the sun, moon, and stars he could see day and night, like the earth he stood upon, were all called planets by people a thousand years later.

Craftwork and miscellaneous techniques once regarded as heterodox paths had become the mainstream of practical learning, developing in ways unimaginable to Han Qian. Meanwhile, the study of principle and theory that had flourished since Confucianism rose during the Han Dynasty had long been consigned to dusty old papers.

War had still not ceased, and the efficiency of bloody slaughter was so high it made Han Qian’s heart tremble with fear. Firearms similar to mechanical crossbows could harvest lives like cutting wheat in a frenzy.

A miraculous iron egg dropped from a flying iron bird could destroy and level an entire giant city.

Noble families and powerful clans had not completely disappeared. Their power didn’t seem as prominent as before, they couldn’t exercise life-and-death control over their servants and maids, but they could still control the world’s people through “money”—or more euphemistically, “capital”—becoming the most core factor constituting power in that world a thousand years later.

In the dream world a thousand years later, he was an orphan named Zhai Xinping who grew up in a welfare institution, studied in government-run schools, and didn’t enter a private equity investment fund until his youth.

Twenty years of accumulating vast wealth allowed him to enjoy all the prosperity and luxury that world a thousand years later had to offer, and to experience all the cunning and treachery of that future world.

One night, as he left a neon-lit bar with his arms around two beautiful women he’d just met, planning to go to a hotel to enjoy the ultimate pleasure of having multiple partners, a black sedan came roaring out from the alley behind the bar and sent him flying through the air.

The bizarre and fantastical dream abruptly ended at that moment, signaling the conclusion of his dream life.

Pain.

Such pain.

What kind of chaotic, messy dream was this?

“Seventh Young Master!”

The door was pushed open from outside. A gray-robed old man with a short beard on his chin and graying temples stood in the doorway. He looked into the room with doubt, then his rather sharp gaze fixed on Han Qian’s face for a while. Probably seeing nothing unusual, he spoke in an explanatory tone:

“Qing Yun said there were unusual sounds in the Seventh Young Master’s room. This old servant was worried that thieves had broken into the manor. Since the Seventh Young Master is fine, this old servant won’t disturb the Seventh Young Master’s night reading and will take his leave now.”

Having said this, the old man closed the door and withdrew.

Did he look like he was fine right now?

Watching Fan Xicheng, the old family guard who had followed his father Han Daoxun for many years and supervised him at the manor, just leave like this, Han Qian’s violent temper flared and he wanted to call him back. But when he tried to open his mouth, his oral cavity and tongue root felt numb—he could only make hoarse sounds, unable to speak.

The numbness in his limbs was still very strong, making it impossible for him to stand up. Though the stabbing pain in his chest wasn’t as intense anymore, it was still extremely uncomfortable.

How the hell could this possibly be the feeling of being drunk?

Thinking of the conversation he had just overheard, Han Qian felt a chill run up his spine from his tailbone.

He had been poisoned?

Was it that little whore Yao Xishui, together with that lover whose face he’d only seen as a vague silhouette, who had poisoned him?

That old bastard Fan Xicheng just glanced at him and left. Didn’t he know that the little whore Yao Xishui had come to visit at night? Could he really not tell that he had been severely poisoned?