The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like angry hornets.
Li Shun stared at the spreadsheet before him, the numbers blurring into meaningless shapes. Forty-two years old. Twenty years in the civil service. A mid-level clerk in the municipal transportation department, buried under an endless avalanche of permits, complaints, and budget reports that no one would ever read.
His back ached from the worn office chair. His eyes burned from hours of screen time. The walls of his cubicle seemed to press closer with each passing year, until he could almost feel them against his shoulders.
*Is this it?* he wondered, not for the first time. *Is this all there is?*
Outside his tiny apartment window, the city sprawled in gray concrete and steel. Car horns blared. Construction crews jackhammered. The world was loud and crowded and moving too fast in every direction.
But in his dreams, Li Shun was free.
In his dreams, he stood on a wooden porch overlooking endless grassland. The sky stretched overhead like a painted dome, blue and vast and dotted with slow-moving clouds. Horses grazed in the distance. Cattle lowed. The smell of sagebrush and wildflowers filled his lungs.
He would wear a worn leather vest and a wide-brimmed hat. A lasso would hang from his saddle. At sunset, he would sit around a fire with good friends, eating slow-cooked beef and listening to a guitar sing songs of open roads and mountain streams.
Montana. Texas. Wyoming.
He had never been to any of those places. He had only seen them in documentaries, in movies, in the glossy pages of magazines he bought at the train station. But somehow, they felt more like home than this cramped office ever had.
"Li Shun, did you finish the quarterly report?"
His supervisor's voice cut through the fantasy. Li Shun looked up, forcing a smile.
"Almost done. Just need to double-check the figures."
"You'd better. The director wants it on his desk by morning."
*By morning.*
It was already past ten at night. The cleaning crew had come and gone. Most of the office lights were off, leaving only the harsh glow of his desk lamp.
"I'll have it ready."
His supervisor walked away without another word. Li Shun turned back to his screen, but his mind was elsewhere. It was always elsewhere.
He opened a hidden folder on his desktop. Inside were hundreds of images he had collected over the years. Angus cattle with their sleek black coats. Herefords with their distinctive white faces. Cowboys on horseback driving herds across golden plains. Ranch houses with wide porches and rocking chairs. BBQ pits sending smoke into twilight skies.
This was his escape. His secret world.
No wife waited for him at home. No children demanded his attention. His parents had passed years ago, and his few distant relatives had scattered across the country. He was alone in the world, connected only to these dreams of a life he would never live.
*A man can dream,* he whispered to himself. *Even if dreams are all he has.*
The chest pain hit him suddenly.
It was not the usual discomfort from poor posture or stress. This was different. A crushing weight, as if an invisible hand had reached inside his ribcage and squeezed.
He gasped. The mouse slipped from his fingers. The spreadsheet on his monitor seemed very far away.
*No,* he thought. *Not now. Not here.*
But his body was no longer listening. He slumped forward, his forehead striking the desk. The last thing he saw was the image on his screen—a ranch in Montana, golden in the afternoon sun.
His hand reached toward it, trembling.
*So close,* he thought. *I was so close to...*
The darkness took him.
---
Li Shun woke to the sound of birds.
Not the mechanical chirping of the alarm clock he had set for 6:30 AM. Real birds. Many of them, singing in what sounded like a morning chorus.
He opened his eyes.
Above him was not the water-stained ceiling of his apartment, but wooden beams. Old wood, darkened by age and smoke. A mosquito net hung from hooks, yellowed and thin.
*Where...*
He sat up, and the world spun. His head throbbed. His body felt strange—lighter, somehow, and yet also weaker. The hands that came up to rub his face were not his own. They were smooth, unlined by age. The fingers were long and slender, the skin pale.
*What is this?*
He looked around the room. It was small and sparsely furnished. A wooden bed with a thin mattress. A lacquered table with a ceramic washbasin. A window covered with paper, not glass.
*Paper window.*
The thought jolted through him. Paper windows meant something. They meant old times. Historical times. Or...
*A drama set? Am I in a hospital, dreaming?*
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. His body moved differently—off-balance, unfamiliar. He stumbled to the window and pushed aside the paper covering.
The world outside made him freeze.
A courtyard stretched before him, paved with gray stones. Flowering trees cast shadows on carefully arranged rocks. Servants in gray robes walked back and forth, carrying buckets and brooms. Beyond the courtyard walls, he could see the curved roofs of other buildings, their tiles gleaming in the morning light.
*I'm not in a hospital.*
His breathing quickened. His heart pounded against his ribs—or rather, against these ribs, this chest, this body that was not his own.
Then came the memories.
They crashed into him like a wave, overwhelming and disorienting. They were not his memories—not the memories of Li Shun, forty-two-year-old government clerk. They belonged to someone else. Someone named...
*Li Shun.*
The name was the same. But the life was completely different.
This Li Shun was nineteen years old. An orphan. The son of a scholar who had died of illness three years ago, leaving behind nothing but debts and a younger son to care for. This Li Shun had been taken in by his father's old friend—a county magistrate named Zhao Wenqing—and given a home. More than a home: a wife.
*Zhao Lian.*
The name surfaced with a flood of complicated emotions. Shame. Longing. Frustration. Love—no, not love, not yet. The hope of love, perhaps. The desperate desire to prove himself worthy.
But worthy of what? This Li Shun had no skills, no achievements, no prospects. He had been a sickly child, then a grieving son, and now he was a burden. A mouth to feed. A charity case dressed up as a husband.
The people of Clearwater County whispered about him. He had heard them in the market, in the teahouses, in the shadowed corners of his own home.
*That Li boy. Good for nothing. Living off his wife's family.*
*A grown man with no trade, no land, no ambition.*
*The magistrate is too kind by half. That boy will drain the household dry.*
The memories continued to settle, fitting into place like puzzle pieces. He learned that he was in the Great Liang Dynasty, in a small county called Clearwater, in the province of Anjing. The Zhao family had lived here for three generations. His father-in-law was the county magistrate—a good man, an honest man, but a man bound by duty and tradition.
His wife...
He thought of Zhao Lian, and the body's heart ached.
Beautiful. Accomplished. The daughter of a magistrate, educated in the classics, skilled in music and embroidery. She had been promised to the son of a wealthy merchant family, but that arrangement had fallen through when the merchant was caught in a corruption scandal. By then, Zhao Lian was eighteen—an age when most girls were already married.
Enter Li Shun's father, a poor scholar who had once done a great favor for Magistrate Zhao. On his deathbed, old Li had extracted a promise: care for my sons. Find a place for them in the world.
The magistrate was a man of his word. He took in both brothers. He even gave his daughter to the elder one, making Li Shun a son-in-law of the Zhao household.
*A live-in son-in-law.*
The phrase carried weight in this world. It meant a man who lived on his wife's family's money, under his wife's family's roof, subject to his wife's family's rules. It was not a position of respect.
And Li Shun—with his weak health and his empty purse—had done nothing to change that perception.
*I died.*
The realization came slowly, settling into his bones.
*I died at my desk, and I was reborn. Into this body. This life. This... situation.*
He should have been afraid. He should have been confused. But instead, a strange calm came over him. Perhaps it was exhaustion. Perhaps it was the acceptance that came after a lifetime of quiet desperation.
Or perhaps it was because, for the first time in decades, he felt something like hope.
He looked at his young hands again. Nineteen. He was nineteen years old. He had a whole life ahead of him.
*And in this world...*
He thought about the cattle he had seen in the memories. Oxen, used for plowing. Sacred working animals, protected by law and custom. Cows were for milk and for breeding. When they grew old or sick, they were slaughtered for meat—but that meat was tough and stringy, fit only for the poorest tables.
Pork was the meat of choice. Pigs were raised in every village, slaughtered without restriction, served at every important occasion.
But beef...
*I know cattle.*
The thought was a spark in the darkness. For twenty years, in between the spreadsheets and the reports and the endless meetings, Li Shun had studied ranching. He had read books. He had watched documentaries. He had subscribed to agricultural journals and browsed cattle breeding forums. He knew the difference between Angus and Hereford, between Simmental and Brahman. He understood marbling and feed efficiency and carcass yield.
He knew grasses—perennial ryegrass for protein, bermudagrass for warm climates, orchard grass for versatility. He knew how to rotate pastures, how to build fences, how to manage a herd.
*This world doesn't know what beef can be.*
The spark grew into a flame.
*And I can show them.*
---
"Shun'er, you're awake."
The voice came from the doorway. Li Shun turned to see a young boy standing there, perhaps fourteen years old, with a thin face and anxious eyes. He carried a basin of water and a towel draped over his arm.
*Li Ming.*
The name came automatically, along with a rush of protective affection. This was his younger brother, the only family he had left in the world. The boy had been twelve when their father died. He had followed Li Shun into the Zhao household, quiet and hardworking and grateful for every scrap of kindness.
"Ming'er," Li Shun said. His voice sounded strange in his ears—higher, softer than he expected. "What time is it?"
"Past the hour of the rabbit. Everyone has already broken their fast." The boy set the basin on the table, his expression worried. "Are you feeling unwell again? Should I fetch the physician?"
*The physician.*
In the memories, Li Shun had been sickly for months after his father's death. Grief, the doctors said. Weakness of the spirit. He had spent most of his wedding bed alone, either coughing in his room or staring blankly at walls.
*No wonder she looks down on me.*
"No physician," he said. "I feel... better. Strange, but better."
Li Ming's face brightened slightly. "That's good. Father—I mean, the magistrate—asked about you this morning. He was concerned."
*The magistrate.*
Zhao Wenqing. The father-in-law who had kept his promise, who had given Li Shun a home and a wife and a place in his household, even when that decision brought whispers and judgment.
*He is a good man.*
Li Shun thought of his own father, dead before he was born. His mother, passed when he was young. The distant relatives who had taken him in reluctantly, grudgingly, always making sure he knew what a burden he was.
*This man took in two orphans because he promised a dying friend. That is rare.*
"Help me dress," he said to Li Ming. "I should pay my respects."
---
The Zhao household was larger than Li Shun had expected from the memories. Walking through its corridors, he saw details that had blurred together in the original Li Shun's depressed haze.
The main courtyard was arranged in the traditional style, with a central pond and carefully pruned trees. Servants' quarters lined the eastern wall. The women's quarters were to the north, behind a moon gate that Li Shun knew he was not supposed to enter uninvited.
The main hall, where the family gathered for meals and received guests, sat at the heart of the compound. It was there that Li Shun found the magistrate taking his morning tea.
Zhao Wenqing was a man in his fifties, with a kindly face and a neat gray beard. His official robes were simple but well-made, and his movements had the measured calm of a man accustomed to responsibility.
He looked up as Li Shun entered and bowed.
"Shun'er. You're well enough to rise?"
"Yes, Father." The word felt strange on Li Shun's tongue, but the original Li Shun had used it, and he saw no reason to change. "Forgive me for missing the morning meal."
The magistrate waved his hand. "Think nothing of it. Your health is more important than breakfast." He gestured to the seat across from him. "Sit. Take some tea."
Li Shun sat. A servant appeared and poured him a cup of steaming liquid. He sipped it slowly, gathering his thoughts.
"I have been thinking," he said carefully.
The magistrate raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Since coming to this household, I have been a burden." Li Shun kept his voice steady, his eyes on the table. "You have given me a home, a wife, a place in your family. And I have given nothing in return."
"Shun'er—"
"Please, Father. Let me finish."
The magistrate fell silent, studying him with surprise and curiosity.
"I have been lost in grief," Li Shun continued. "Lost in self-pity. I told myself I was too weak, too unskilled, too useless to be of value to anyone. But that was a lie. I was simply afraid."
*And the original Li Shun believed it. But I am not him. I am someone else—someone who spent twenty years dreaming of a different life.*
"Afraid of what?" the magistrate asked quietly.
"Of failing. Of trying and proving that I truly am worthless." Li Shun looked up, meeting the older man's eyes. "But I have realized something. Failing while trying is better than failing by default."
The magistrate set down his teacup. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes had sharpened with interest.
"You have something in mind?"
"I do." Li Shun took a breath. "I want to buy land."
"Land?"
"In the western part of the county. The hilly area near the border. I know it is not considered good farmland—the soil is poor, and the terrain is rough. But I believe I can put it to use."
The magistrate frowned. "That land is nearly worthless. No one farms it. What would you do with it?"
*Here goes everything.*
"I want to raise cattle."
The silence stretched between them. The magistrate's face showed confusion, then concern.
"Cattle?" he said slowly. "For plowing? Shun'er, the farmers in this county already have oxen. There is no market for—"
"Not for plowing." Li Shun leaned forward, feeling the first spark of genuine passion he had experienced since waking in this world. "For meat."
"Meat?"
The magistrate's voice had gone flat. In this dynasty, as in many ancient cultures, the slaughter of cattle was restricted. Oxen and cows were too valuable as draft animals to be killed for food. Only when they were sick, injured, or too old to work could they be slaughtered—and by then, their meat was tough and nearly inedible.
"Father, I know what you are thinking. But hear me out. What if cattle could be raised specifically for meat? What if there were breeds that grew faster, produced more flesh, and tasted far better than the old work oxen we eat now?"
"Breeds?" The magistrate shook his head slowly. "Shun'er, cattle are cattle. They work the fields. When they can no longer work, they become food. That is the way of things."
"The way of things is not always the best way."
Li Shun's voice was calm, but beneath it was a current of absolute certainty. He had spent twenty years studying this. He knew what was possible.
"In distant lands—lands that perhaps no one in this dynasty has ever heard of—there are cattle unlike any we have here. Black cattle with smooth coats, famous for the quality of their flesh. Red cattle with white faces, massive and hardy. Cattle with so much fat marbled through their meat that it melts in your mouth."
The magistrate stared at him. "And how would you know of such cattle? You have never left this province."
Li Shun had prepared for this question. He had to be careful—not even the most gullible person would believe the truth.
"I read about them," he said. "In my father's books. He was a scholar, Father. He collected texts from many lands. Some spoke of distant kingdoms where cattle were raised for food, not just for work. I thought they were legends at first, but the descriptions were so detailed, so specific..."
He let his voice trail off, allowing the magistrate to draw his own conclusions.
*The original Li Shun's father was indeed a scholar. Whether he actually owned such books is irrelevant—he is dead, and no one can check.*
The magistrate was silent for a long moment. His fingers drummed against the table, a habit Li Shun would come to recognize as a sign of deep thought.
"You want money," he said finally. "To buy land and cattle."
"I want a loan. I will pay it back, with interest, within five years."
"Five years?"
"If the venture succeeds, it may be sooner. If it fails, I will work to repay you for the rest of my life."
The magistrate's eyes softened. "Shun'er, you are family. You do not need to speak of repayment—"
"I do." Li Shun's voice was firm. "I need to earn my place in this household. Not through marriage, not through charity, but through my own efforts. Please, Father. Give me this chance."
---
The magistrate did not answer immediately. He rang for a servant and requested that his wife and daughter join them in the main hall.
*Here we go.*
Li Shun had expected this. In a traditional household, major financial decisions required the approval of the family heads—and in practice, that included the matriarch and, increasingly, the daughter who had married the petitioner.
Madam Zhao arrived first. She was a stout woman in her late forties, with a round face and shrewd eyes. She had never been cruel to Li Shun, but her patience had worn thin over the months of his idleness.
"Shun'er is asking for money," the magistrate explained. "To buy land and raise cattle for meat."
Madam Zhao's expression flickered through several emotions—surprise, confusion, skepticism—before settling on guarded interest.
"How much money?"
"Fifty silver taels," Li Shun said. "For the land, a few animals to start, and basic equipment."
*Fifty taels. It was not a small sum—a servant might earn five or six taels in a year—but it was not a fortune either. Enough to start small. Enough to prove himself.*
Before Madam Zhao could respond, the door opened again.
Li Shun looked up and felt his breath catch.
Zhao Lian stood in the doorway.
She was beautiful. The original Li Shun's memories had not exaggerated that. Her face was oval, with delicate features and skin that seemed to glow in the morning light. Her hair was pinned up in an elaborate style, with silver ornaments catching the light. She wore a pale green robe embroidered with small flowers, and her movements were graceful and refined.
But it was her eyes that held Li Shun's attention. Dark, intelligent, and very, very cold.
She looked at him the way a queen might look at a beggar who had wandered into her throne room.
*She despises me.*
The realization was painful, even though he had expected it. The original Li Shun had been a poor excuse for a husband—sickly, moping, useless. She had been married to him against her will, or at least without her enthusiasm, and he had done nothing to change her mind.
*That changes now.*
"Father, Mother," Zhao Lian said, greeting her parents with a graceful bow. Her eyes passed over Li Shun as if he were furniture. "You sent for me?"
"Your husband has made a request," Madam Zhao said. "He wishes to borrow fifty taels to buy land and start a cattle ranch."
Zhao Lian's beautiful face showed nothing but polite confusion. "A cattle ranch? For what purpose?"
"For meat," Li Shun said quietly. "I intend to raise cattle specifically for food. High-quality beef, unlike anything available in this dynasty."
She turned to him, and for a moment, their eyes met. Her gaze was assessing, weighing, measuring.
*She thinks I am mad.*
"Cattle for food," she repeated slowly. "Husband, you know the laws. Slaughtering healthy cattle is—"
"Restricted, not forbidden. The ban applies to draft animals, not to animals raised specifically for consumption."
"Is there such a distinction in the law?"
Li Shun nodded. "I have researched it. The edict protects 'working beasts essential to agriculture.' Animals that are born and raised for food, that never work a plow, fall outside the prohibition."
*This was true—he had verified it in the original Li Shun's memories, which included several legal texts. The law was designed to prevent farmers from killing their own draft animals during hard times, not to forbid the consumption of beef entirely.*
Zhao Lian studied him. Her expression was unreadable.
"And you believe you can sell this beef? At a profit?"
"I do."
"Based on what? Scholarly texts about distant lands?"
*She knows about the books. Of course she does—she probably helped organize her father-in-law's library after his death.*
"Based on those texts, yes. And based on my own analysis of the market. The wealthy in this dynasty pay enormous sums for exotic foods. Beef that is tender, flavorful, and widely available would command high prices."
"And you know how to produce this beef?"
Li Shun met her gaze steadily. "I do."
---
The discussion continued for another hour. The magistrate asked probing questions about logistics, land selection, and cattle management. Madam Zhao focused on financial risks and the family's reputation. Zhao Lian said little, but her eyes never left Li Shun's face.
*She is trying to decide if I am sincere or simply more deluded than before.*
Finally, the magistrate leaned back in his chair.
"I will consider it," he said. "The land you mentioned—let me make inquiries about ownership and price. We will discuss this again in three days."
Li Shun bowed low. "Thank you, Father. I will not disappoint you."
He left the main hall with Li Ming trailing behind him. But as he crossed the courtyard, a voice called out from the moon gate.
"Husband."
He turned. Zhao Lian stood in the gateway, her face half-shadowed by the flowering tree above her.
"Wife."
She walked toward him, her steps measured and deliberate. When she stopped, there was a careful distance between them—not so far as to be rude, not so close as to be intimate.
"I have a question," she said quietly. "And I would like an honest answer."
"Of course."
She regarded him, her expression thoughtful.
"In the months since our wedding, you have been... absent. Grieving, perhaps, or simply lost. You showed no interest in anything—not in the household, not in a career, not in me."
*There it is. The bitterness beneath the coldness.*
"Now, suddenly, you speak of cattle and land and exotic beef with passion and confidence. You have clearly studied this. You have clearly thought about it. And yet, until today, you never mentioned it."
She tilted her head.
"What changed?"
---
The question hung in the air between them.
*What changed?*
Li Shun considered his answer carefully. He could not tell her the truth. He could not explain that he was a forty-two-year-old civil servant who had died at his desk and woken in another man's body, carrying with him two decades of knowledge about an industry that did not exist in this world.
But he could tell her something true.
"I had a dream," he said slowly. "A dream that I was in a place far from here—a place of open grasslands and endless skies. I saw cattle the likes of which I had never seen, and men on horseback driving them across the plains. I saw fires burning at sunset, and people gathered around them, eating meat so tender it fell apart at a touch."
*It was not a lie. Those dreams had sustained him for twenty years.*
"When I woke, I realized something. I have been waiting to live. Waiting for something to change, waiting for someone to give me permission to be more than I was."
He looked at his wife—really looked at her, perhaps for the first time since arriving in this world.
"I am done waiting. Whether this venture succeeds or fails, I will not spend another day merely existing. I will build something. I will try. And perhaps, in time, I will become the kind of man who deserves to stand beside you."
Zhao Lian was silent for a long moment. Her expression had changed—the coldness had cracked, just slightly, revealing something underneath. Surprise, perhaps. Or curiosity.
"I hope you succeed," she said finally. "Truly."
Then she turned and walked back through the moon gate, disappearing into the women's quarters.
Li Ming, who had been standing at a respectful distance, came forward with wide eyes.
"Brother, that was... impressive. I have never seen you speak like that. So confident. So..."
*Alive.*
"Things are going to change, Ming'er," Li Shun said quietly, looking at the space where his wife had stood. "For both of us. I promise."
He looked up at the sky—blue and vast, dotted with clouds.
*This is not the Montana of my dreams. But perhaps... perhaps it can be something even better.*