Los Tres Reinos y los innumerables mundos

Capítulo 1

Volume 1, pawnshop number [number missing]

I won't be time-traveling in the first chapter, you guys go ahead.

I'm so unlucky, really.

Others travel through history to become powerful rulers or kings, or at the very least, return to the Ming Dynasty to become a prince. But I'm the one who gets transported back in time. Yesterday, Liu Laoliu brought back this guy who turns out to be Jing Ke!

That's him, the guy who wanted to hold a concert before attempting to assassinate Qin Shi Huang.

The story needs to be told from the beginning.

That day, I was walking along, not bothering anyone, when as I passed the park's outer wall, a dirty old man waved his filthy, postmodern hand at me: "Little friend, you've got some fortune to tell today..."

As the saying goes, "boredom breeds trouble," and I, a completely idle person, squatted down in front of the old man, coughing and spitting, thinking that since I had nothing better to do, I might as well. The main reason I wasn't afraid he would cheat me was that I only had 5 yuan in my pocket.

I said with a grin, "Then you should first calculate my surname, the year I was born, and what I do. If you get it right, I'll give you the money."

The old charlatan shook his head with feigned authority: "Those are all tricks of charlatans, but I am a deity—and I ask you: do you want to be a deity too?"

What a brilliant opening! You wouldn't want to leave either, would you?

Anyway, I couldn't bear to leave. I guess this old man might write a whole book: "I see you have extraordinary talent and are a peerless master, one in a million... The task of maintaining world peace will be entrusted to you from now on."

But a master is a master. He said something amazing to me that made me worship him wholeheartedly, which led to a series of bad luck later on.

He told me, "The Baisha cigarettes you're smoking are fake!"

Upon hearing this, my immediate feeling was just like what a versatile reader on Qidian described: I felt like some kind of flower had somehow managed to do this or that to me...

I usually buy my cigarettes from the little tobacco shop across from my house, but today when I went out, I realized I was out of cigarettes. Turns out, the pack I bought was completely fake! No wonder people say that for a man, buying a pack of fake cigarettes is second only to discovering his wife isn't a virgin on his wedding night.

0.01 seconds after the old man said that, I knew I was going to lose the five yuan in my pocket.

What happened next can only be described as a complete turn of events.

"You could have become an immortal, but just before the Department of Immortal Affairs (on par with the Department of Personnel) was about to approve your application, you fell in love with a female demon. This matter itself was not a big deal, but it brought immeasurable public pressure to the immortal realm and a long-standing and difficult problem: what kind of moral standard should be used to judge someone who is about to become an immortal but has not yet done so?"

To be honest, my first instinct was that a Peking University professor was disguised as a charlatan conducting research on mental health. I even secretly looked around but didn't find anything that looked like a hidden camera.

"The Jade Emperor was very angry, and the consequences were severe. He originally intended to strike you with nine bolts of lightning, but since that day happened to be the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, he changed it to a single bolt of lightning at the urging of the Seventh Princess..."

I interrupted and asked, "What's the difference between being struck by lightning nine times and being struck by lightning once?"

"There's no difference, you're dead anyway."

I:"……"

"Later, the celestial realm reached a conclusion regarding your issue: that you should not be punished for falling in love with a fairy before you became an immortal."

I:"……"

"So they decided to retroactively register you. Now you have two choices: First, spend your life doing something for them, and after that, they'll naturally put you (this word makes me very uncomfortable) on the altar to become a god."

I was curious, so I asked, "What about the second option?"

"The second option was proposed by the Queen Mother of the West. This woman meant: Since you like that little demon, let's test you for three lifetimes. If you can be together in every lifetime, then you can become immortals together."

I straightened up and said, "The story is wonderful, but I haven't eaten yet. Bye-bye!"

However, this old charlatan grabbed me and asked, "What do I have to do for you to believe I'm a god?"

I said lazily, "If you don't let go, I'll smash your face with a brick!"

"Why not give it a try—I mean, why don't you tell me something to prove I'm a god?"

"You'll only believe me if you turn me into a woman!" I glanced at the advertisement poster of Zhang Ziyi on the building across the street. "Turn me into Zhang Ziyi and I'll believe you."

I was so stupid, so incredibly stupid (as Xianglin's wife said). I actually made such a perverted request.

The old guy pointed at me, and without him saying anything, I knew something was wrong. My manhood, which wasn't as "perfect" as an AV actor's, vanished like a chaff in a category 12 typhoon! I clutched my crotch, and this old bastard shoved me into the street, yelling, "Look at Zhang Ziyi!"

The first to spot me were two "dinosaurs" lurking on the street; these two women together weighed at least 300 kilograms. After hearing the old charlatan's shouts, they glanced in my direction unintentionally, then screamed as if a strange hand had slipped into their crotch. Fortunately, it was only a little past one in the afternoon, and luckily, I was wearing a black silk shirt and capri pants, so I kept my head down and didn't attract anyone's attention.

With a sudden, earth-shaking tremor, two dinosaurs charged at me. I had no choice but to press my tongue against my upper palate, shout from my dantian, and leap (climb) over the park wall in a flash. Through the railing, I pleaded with the old charlatan, "Quickly turn me back!"

By then, the two dinosaurs were only a wall away from me. One of them grabbed the railing and swayed it slightly, and the entire wall began to crumble. I stretched one hand out over the railing and cried out pitifully, "Ruhua, go away, don't worry about me..."

...After a long period of chaos, the old charlatan finally turned me back. Then he put on sunglasses, took out a pen-like object, and said to the two dinosaurs, "Look here..." With a click, the two dinosaurs froze in shock (see *Men in Black* for details). But after a moment—"Zhang Ziyi!" one of the dinosaurs shouted. The old charlatan broke out in a cold sweat and muttered, "Looks like Western stuff is unreliable..."

Enough of the digressions, let's get back to the main topic.

"Believe me or not, I'm a god?"

"What do you want me to do? Just say it." Having regained my male form, I still maintained a somewhat self-righteous tone. Even if he were a god, I only had 5 yuan in my pocket. What could he do to me?

"Don't get emotional, I'm here to help you. Remember what I told you? As long as you do things for them, they'll make you an immortal."

"Tell me what you want to do first?" Actually, I'm not interested in becoming an immortal. What's the point of becoming a five-star general? I could still turn into a moonlit pigman if I flirted with Chang'e.

"The underworld has been quite unsettled lately because the judge drank too much at the wedding of Yama's brother-in-law and shortened the lifespan of a large number of people in the Book of Life and Death by a year. To make up for it, Yama had to implement a policy of 'returning two or even three years for each short lifespan,' making up for the year in their next life. But you should know that while ordinary people are easy to deal with, some people absolutely refuse, such as historical figures and emperors. These people have powerful backgrounds, and Yama dares not offend them, so he had no choice but to agree to let them return to the mortal world and enjoy another year of carefree life."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"Don't you ever think about what would happen if you put them back in their time? What would happen to Liu Bang and Xiang Yu in that year? What would happen to Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi? Would Li Shimin kill Wu Zetian? Would Genghis Khan have been able to change the map of today? Not to mention these people, if Li Bai and Du Fu had spent another year in the world, who knows what they would have written that would have influenced posterity? What strange and wonderful things would Cai Lun have invented—do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Pretty much. It's a domino effect; any one of them going back could potentially reshape history, so we can't let them return to their time." As soon as I said that, I knew things were going to get bad. "You're not going to bring all those people here with me, are you?"

The old charlatan laughed smugly, "Who says otherwise? The King of Hell tricked them into going to a 'paradise on earth' to make up for a year of their lifespan, and this 'paradise on earth' refers to this place."