In the dimly lit side hall of the Gong'an County Office, a gathering of military officers stood in a loose circle, studying one another with a mixture of curiosity and professional caution.
It was, to say the least, an eclectic group.
Some were veterans who had followed Liu Bei through the mud and blood of the northern campaigns for more than a decade.
Others were recent recruits who had joined the cause only within the last few months.
Some had risen from the fields as common men.
Others were surrendered generals from enemy ranks.
And among them stood one young man whose father's name alone was spoken with reverence across the realm.
Guan Ping stood upright among the crowd, his posture as steady and immovable as a mountain.
He could feel the weight of their gazes, especially from the newer officers, many of whom looked at him as an extension of Guan Yu's reputation rather than as his own man.
Yet his expression did not change in the slightest.
His face remained calm, disciplined, and unreadable.
"Is everyone here? Good. Come inside."
The voice cut cleanly through the low murmur in the room.
The speaker was Zhao Zilong.
He stepped into the center of the hall, looking every bit the poised commander.
In one hand, he held a thick stack of parchment densely covered in notes and annotations.
In the other, he carried a bucket of hot tea as casually as if it were a light travel bag.
After signaling the personal guards to secure the perimeter and bolt the doors, Zhao Yun moved with practiced efficiency to throw open the windows on all four sides.
Morning light immediately flooded the room.
At once, the centerpiece of the hall was revealed.
A massive sand table sprawled across the center, depicting the geography of the Central Plains in astonishing detail.
The faces of Xiahou Lan, Gao Xiang, Chen Shi, and Fu Rong visibly paled.
The sight instantly dragged them back to the psychological torment of the previous tactical exercise, when they had been forced to simulate the disastrous Battle of Xiangfan.
The memory of that buffet of bad choices still lingered like ash on the tongue.
"Wait," Chen Shi muttered, glancing around. "Ma Su isn't here. I heard he was sent to assist the Military Advisor with administration. But where's Fu Shiren?"
Zhao Yun smiled.
It was the sort of smile that never quite reached the eyes. The sort that usually heralded a long and painful training session.
"By direct order of the Lord, the next two months of your lives belong to this room."
His voice was calm.
"You will not leave until you have successfully completed five separate tactical simulations."
He began handing out the parchment stacks.
The generals quickly scanned the headings.
Fu Rong quietly let out the breath he had been holding. At first glance, the scenarios appeared far more grounded than the previous one.
The last exercise, which had demanded that they use thirty thousand men to defeat seventy thousand while taking thirty thousand prisoners, had felt closer to hallucination than military study.
Zhao Yun picked up a long wooden pointer and began tapping points across the sand table with sharp, rhythmic clacks.
"Scenario one: The Battle of Jing-Xiang."
"Scenario two: The Defense of Hanzhong."
"Scenario three: The Breaking of Wu at the Xiang River."
"Scenario four: The Siege of Hefei."
"Scenario five: The Standoff at Yiling."
He paused, allowing the names of those future battles to settle over the room.
"In these simulations, you are colleagues."
"You are encouraged to discuss, argue, and revise until you believe you have found a path to victory."
He let the pointer rest lightly in his hand.
"However, a single victory is not enough."
A mischievous glint entered Zhao Yun's eyes.
"For each scenario, you will first command our side. If you succeed, you will immediately switch sides and command the enemy."
"To be considered qualified, you must win from both perspectives. We are not merely teaching you how to fight. We are teaching you how the enemy thinks."
The generals remained silent.
Zhao Yun had expected at least one of the younger hot-blooded officers to rise in challenge.
Instead, the room remained remarkably disciplined.
The new recruits were cautious, waiting to see how the veterans responded.
The veterans, such as Guan Ping and Fu Rong, were far too seasoned to be baited by a simple provocation.
Seeing that his attempt at stirring them had failed, Zhao Yun gave a small shrug and his tone sharpened.
"This room is a classified zone."
"The laws of military secrecy are absolute."
"What you see on this table must not be spoken of outside.You will not sketch these maps for your friends. You will not take these manuals home to read aloud to your wives."
"If any of you are caught compromising the Lord's secrets, you will stand before him in chains."
"By then, regret will be of very little use."
At once, the generals straightened and answered in a unified shout.
Satisfied, Zhao Yun decided to leave them alone for a while.
If he remained, they would spend too much time looking to him for solutions.
They needed to argue.
They needed to fail. They needed frustration before true understanding could take root.
He stepped out of the hall and made his way into the streets of Gong'an to clear his mind.
Gong'an was a city in the midst of a violent and beautiful transformation.
Though still technically only a county seat, its pulse had quickened.
When Lei Xu had first arrived with fifty thousand refugees, many had feared the city would collapse under the weight of so many new mouths.
Yet with the securing of Jiangling and the garrisoning of Dangyang, Linju, and Jingyang, much of that pressure had eased.
Under the direction of Guan Yu and Sun Qian, Jiangling was steadily being rebuilt into a fortress of commerce and military supply, drawing in those who sought a new beginning.
The people who remained in Gong'an now lived in a reality their parents could scarcely have imagined.
When Liu Bei first arrived, he had followed Kongming's advice to reclaim the wasteland and distribute it among the people.
That decision alone had earned him a loyalty bordering on devotion. But it was the Light Screen that had truly ignited the transformation.
Inspired by the knowledge of the future, Zhuge Liang had personally overseen a revolution in agriculture.
He taught the peasants the art of selecting and breeding stronger seed stock.
He introduced the curved plow, which turned soil in half the time and with far less effort.
He pioneered the use of fermented fertilizer, transforming waste into wealth.
Through the tireless efforts of the Military Advisor and Jiang Gongyan, grain production in Gong'an had risen by thirty-five percent in a single cycle.
Even in the four southern commanderies, where implementation was slower, yields had already increased by fifteen percent.
The granaries were overflowing.
Yet the tax burden had been drastically reduced.
In the past, local lords often extracted sixty or even seventy percent of a farmer's harvest.
Liu Bei had fixed the levy at a flat forty percent.
For the first time in generations, the people of Jingzhou possessed a true surplus.
They had enough to eat.
Enough to sell.
Enough to plan for tomorrow.
The city itself hummed with industry.
The low groan of water-powered mills echoed from the riverbanks, where rotary waterwheels processed grain at a fraction of the old labor cost.
Those who found themselves with spare time between planting seasons were no longer idle.
They worked in the paper mills, the ironworks, or on the construction of the new city walls.
Zhao Yun walked down the main thoroughfare.
Shops lined both sides of the street, selling cloth, paper, and refined iron tools.
He even spotted several stalls selling malt candy, once a treat reserved only for major festivals, now being sold to common children who actually had coins to spend.
Get your Ink Cakes here! Half the price of charcoal, twice the burn time!" a street peddler shouted, waving a dark, cylindrical brick at the passing crowd.
Zhao Yun immediately recognized it.
In fact, every new innovation in Gong'an was first tested by his personal guard of two hundred elite scouts.
They had already used the Ink Cakes in the field and praised them for being easy to carry and nearly impossible to extinguish even in strong winds.
The commoners were hesitant, eyeing the black bricks with suspicion, worried about being scammed by a fast-talking merchant.
Zhao Yun pushed through the crowd and slapped a handful of coins into the peddler's hand.
"There is a house on the backstreet near the County Office with a Zhao banner flying outside."
He raised his voice so the crowd could hear. "Deliver thirty catties there."
"General Zhao!" "It's General Zilong!"
The mood of the crowd changed instantly.
Most locals recognized Zhao Yun.
Not merely because of his striking appearance and white horse, but because when Kongming was out in the fields teaching the people how to plant, Zhao Yun was usually right beside him, sleeves rolled up and boots sunk in the mud.
He was a hero. But more importantly, he was a hero who worked.
Zhao Yun gave a casual wave and continued walking.
Behind him, the peddler was immediately swarmed by customers.
If it was good enough for General Zhao, it was good enough for the family hearth.
By the time Zhao Yun returned to the hall, the atmosphere inside had completely changed.
Cold professionalism had transformed into heated intellectual warfare.
The generals were gathered tightly around the sand table, arguing over supply routes, ambush positions, and fallback lines.
Zhao Yun did not go easy on them.
Taking command of the enemy side, he used a small expendable force to lure the Jiangling defenders out from behind their walls.
While they focused on the bait, his cavalry and reinforcements emerged from concealed terrain, cutting off the retreat and theoretically capturing the city.
Afterward, he stretched his arms.
The joints in his back cracked sharply.
"You still have a long way to go."
His voice was blunt.
"If you have the time, cross the river to Jiangling and watch the naval drills."
"You might learn something about maneuverability, which you are clearly lacking on land."
Leaving the officers to their subdued post-battle analysis, Zhao Yun moved to the window.
Outside, the sky had turned a deep bruised purple with the setting sun.
Unbidden, his thoughts drifted north.
Back in Zhending, in Changshan, the snow must already be thick on the ground.
He had not felt homesick in years.
But after witnessing the future Light Screen, seeing the shrines and memorial arches the people of the future had raised in his hometown, something within him had shifted.
And seeing young Gan Gui, willing to risk everything for the chance to return to his ancestral land in Ba Commandery, had only deepened that ache.
When will I ever be able to return? Soon, he hoped.
Neither Liu Bei nor Kongming had said anything openly.
But the frantic stockpiling of grain, the aggressive recruitment of troops, and the heavy investment in naval development all pointed toward one thing.
Zhao Yun could almost smell it in the air.
The scent of a coming storm.
When Zhengdan, the Lunar New Year, arrived, it carried with it a quiet sense of triumph.
Compared to the previous year, when every meal had felt as if it might be the last, Liu Bei was finally able to breathe.
He no longer needed to go before Sun Quan's court to beg for land or play the part of the impoverished relative.
At the New Year banquet, Liu Bei sat together with his two wives, Lady Sun and Lady Gan.
He watched as Liu Feng returned from his duties under Zhang Fei and respectfully bowed before Lady Gan, whose health had greatly improved under the care of the Divine Physician.
Little Adou, the future Liu Shan, sat quietly in Lady Sun's lap, unusually well-behaved.
For once, Liu Bei felt a deep and overwhelming sense of contentment.
His ministers were in harmony.
His household was at peace.
His sons were learning the rites.
For the first time, the restoration of the Han no longer felt like a desperate dream. It felt like a plan.
Yet the festival respite was short.
The mountain of paperwork that had accumulated during the holiday quickly demanded attention, especially from the two Military Advisors.
Zhuge Liang was buried beneath logistics reports, finalizing the distribution of seed stock and fertilizer for the spring planting across the four southern commanderies.
Pang Tong, meanwhile, was cross-referencing Gong'an's tax revenue against the other commanderies, drafting a tax code that would remain fair to the people while still strengthening the war chest.
Even Ma LJichang, who had been sent deep into Wuling to oversee irrigation works and agricultural reforms, did not return until the very end of the month, still covered in road dust.
As the date foretold by the Light Screen drew near, the entire administration seemed to hold its breath.
The pace of daily work slowed.
In its place came a tense anticipation.
Liu Bei sat at his desk, staring at a list of names, still considering his next appointments.
Meanwhile, Pang Tong was already standing in the courtyard, looking up into the clear night sky with hungry expectation.
Kongming… they say you possess the talent to settle the world.
A small competitive smile touched his lips.
Let me see it.
Show me this "magic" of yours that the future admires so much.
The Light Screen shimmered.
The silence of the night was broken by the familiar low hum of celestial energy.
The next chapter of their lives was about to begin.