A thunderous crack split the darkness.
Jeng Minh jolted upright—only to discover he had no body.
Or rather, he did, but it wasn't the one he remembered.
Where his wrists should have been thin and scholar-pale, they were thick, scar-laced, and wrapped in hardened leather bracers. His chest rose and fell behind layers of heavy armor that smelled of iron, sweat, and smoke. Beneath him was not the mattress of his cramped apartment in Guangzhou, but a lacquered campaign bed, rocking gently from distant tremors.
This… is not my room.
Even before the panic could fully form, a second sound arrived—drums, deep and rhythmic, like the heartbeat of a giant.
Boom.Boom.Boom.
War drums.
Cold dread climbed Jeng Minh's spine. His mind swam with fragments of memory—rows of spreadsheets, a half-finished instant noodle cup, a binge-read webnovel about ancient kingdoms. None of it explained the calloused hands currently gripping the bedframe.
A soft chime echoed in his head.
[Host consciousness stabilized.][Welcome, Zhou Chen.]
Jeng Minh froze.
"Zhou… Chen?" he whispered, the unfamiliar voice deep and commanding.
The name hit him like a hammer. Zhou Chen—the Iron Wolf of the Northwest. A fearsome warlord from the Legend of Ten Banners series he had been reading before bed. The man whose ruthless campaigns united half the frontier… before being betrayed, ambushed, and left to bleed to death on a battlefield.
And you transmigrated into him?At what point in the story?
Another tremor rattled the bed. Shouting erupted outside the tent—men barking orders, steel clashing, horses screaming.
A soldier burst in through the tent flap, breathless, armor hastily thrown on.
"Lord Zhou! The enemy vanguard has breached the western ridge! General Feng says we must fall back or be surrounded!"
Jeng Minh blinked.
Fall back? Surrounded?
He scrambled through Zhou Chen's fragmented memories, desperate for context. They came in pieces: maps, long campaigns, bitter rivalries. A crushing disadvantage. A night attack. And then—pain, betrayal, darkness.
This is the night Zhou Chen was supposed to die.
The soldier stared at him, confusion creeping into his expression.
"My lord? Orders?"
Jeng Minh swallowed hard. His mind screamed that he was a bookkeeper, not a warlord. But the soldier's fear—and faith—were painfully real.
He forced himself upright. His legs wobbled, but his new body responded with surprising strength.
"Tell General Feng…" he began, then hesitated.
What would Zhou Chen do?More importantly—what would keep him alive?
A plan sparked, half memory, half desperation.
"Order the central camp to ignite the oil trenches," Jeng Minh said, voice steadying. "And have the cavalry circle behind the southern ridge. We'll turn their ambush… into our trap."
The soldier's eyes widened. "Understood, my lord!"
He sprinted out.
Jeng Minh exhaled, shaky but determined.
He was in Zhou Chen's body. In a world at war. At the moment of the warlord's greatest defeat.
And somehow, he had just issued his first command.
He looked down at his armored hands.
"If I'm Zhou Chen now," he murmured, "then I refuse to die the way he did."
Outside, the oil trenches ignited—roaring to life like fiery serpents. Shouts rose. Horses thundered. Steel rang.
The battlefield awaited its new warlord.
And Jeng Minh—now Zhou Chen—took his first step into the legend he once only read about.