Prologue
Romance of the Three Kingdoms. A story so famous that anyone who's heard of it knows it.
Liu Bei.
Cao Cao.
Sun Quan.
In my case, I first came across it back in middle school, in comic-book form, at the library. For a kid who'd only ever read educational comics like Surviving This or That or What?, it was a whole new world.
I lost all track of time, happily reading from the Yellow Turban Rebellion all the way through to the Battle of Wuzhang Plains. Even after I finished, I'd borrow it again every chance I got and reread it any number of times.
That was probably when I first fell in love with the Three Kingdoms.
I read all sorts of novels built on its setting. Played the games, too. That said, I never went so far as to study it in earnest.
Whenever I opened the official histories—not the novel Luo Guanzhong had penned, the one known as the Romance—sleep would come drifting over me before I knew it. They were, quite literally, nothing but books of historical records, and I remember them being dreadfully dull.
And so my love for the Three Kingdoms remained, first and foremost, a hobby. Something to enjoy lightly, and nothing more.
If I'd known I was going to be born into a place like this out of nowhere, I would never have left it at that.