Into the World of Strange Tales

Maple Mountain lay more than ten miles north of Jiangzhou’s outskirts, its name bestowed for the profusion of maple trees cloaking its slopes. Each autumn, the leaves blazed crimson as fire, dazzling all who beheld them.

This year, the maples burned with unparalleled brilliance, a sea of scarlet sweeping the hills like a vast torch ablaze. Yet beside such fiery beauty, Chen Jianchen’s mood was ashen.

Chen Jianchen, courtesy name “Liuxian,” hailed from Jiangzhou. Sixteen years of age, he was a student scholar, commonly known as a “xiucai.”

Attaining the rank of xiucai was no simple feat—it required passing a stringent series of entrance examinations for youths: county, prefecture, and academy tests, ascending step by step. Only those who succeeded at every stage could become student scholars.

Chen Jianchen was exceptional, winning first place in all three trials, his name echoing throughout Jiangzhou. He was admitted as a stipend scholar to Minghua Academy, the city’s most renowned official school.

A stipend scholar—a student whose studies were funded by the court, receiving a monthly allotment of rice, free from worry over food and clothing, able to devote himself wholly to his studies.

Such a future promised brightness—were it not for the fact that he had been transmigrated!

Yes, Chen Jianchen’s soul and consciousness now belonged to a student from modern Earth.

Transmigration—an event rare and unpredictable. Yet when this modern scholar realized the world into which he had been thrust, he could only feel his vision darken