"Life is always full of too much helplessness."

I don’t know when, this sentence became Yang Xuan’s mantra. When people reach middle age, the feeling of powerlessness in life is like a flooding tide, which often sweeps over inadvertently, making Yang Xuan breathless.

When he was young, Yang Xuan was also a passionate young man with great ambitions, eager to become a racing driver. He was determined to make progress and worked hard. He passed five levels and defeated six generals in the college entrance examination and was admitted to a 211 University.

The competition in the college entrance examination in southern Jiangsu is extremely fierce. The Yang family is very proud that Yang Xuan was admitted to the 211 University.

He was very ambitious and thought that a great future lay ahead of him.

When applying for the college entrance examination, Yang Xuan had a fierce quarrel with his parents. He wanted to apply for the automotive engineering major, but his parents, both of whom had come from experience, said that the automotive industry was in recession and it would be difficult to find employment in the future.

In the end, Yang Xuan had no choice but to follow his parents' advice and choose computer science. This was not Yang Xuan's favorite major, but it could help him find a job and settle down in a big city.

Reality is always too cruel.

As soon as he graduated from college, Yang Xuan encountered the economic downturn. With the last trace of stubbornness, he said goodbye to his parents, left the humid and comfortable southern Jiangsu, and came to Shenzhen to pursue his career.

The talent market in first-tier cities is saturated, and it is difficult for Yang Xuan to find an ideal job. However, big cities are big cities after all, and to a certain extent, they can give Yang Xuan a false sense of stability, equality, and freedom.

Ten years have passed, and Yang Xuan has become a veteran from the workplace.

Time has worn away the edges of Yang Xuan's body, and he, who was originally cynical, has gradually become numb. The high housing prices have made him unable to recall his dream of being a racing driver, and have reduced him to an out-and-out social animal.

Only by returning home at night, turning on the computer and playing the game "Civilization" can relieve Yang Xuan's fatigue, let his adrenaline surge, and temporarily forget the helplessness of reality.

Or, when the night is quiet, Yang Xuan turns on the lonely lamp, brews a pot of tea, picks up a history book, and passes the long night caused by insomnia.

The "Civilization" game and history books have become the favorites of middle-aged man Yang Xuan. Without a wife, children, or girlfriend, Yang Xuan found solace in games and history books.

He is neither greasy nor worldly, nor conforms to the crowd nor stands out.

He tried hard not to be overwhelmed by the times, but he was unable to stay on top of the times.

Yang Xuan, Yang Xuan, he is just an ordinary person. If nothing else happens, he will be like most people, just like a grain of sand in the desert, blown to the ground by the wind, and blown away by the wind again, leaving nothing behind.

Leave no trace.

Recently, Yang Xuan has become obsessed with "Civilization 6" and especially likes to play the Qing Dynasty script. In the Qing Dynasty 1840 script, China is facing internal and external troubles. There is the Heaven and Earth Association internally, the Taiping Army revolts, and the oppression of external powers. The game is extremely difficult.

Yang Xuan played with this script for a long time and gained a lot of knowledge about the late Qing Dynasty, but he was still unable to master this script well.

It was Saturday. Yang Xuan went to bed early last night and got up early in the morning. The single man had enough to eat and the whole family was not hungry. After running in the morning, he played "Civilization 6" all day long.

As expected, Yang Xuan lost miserably in this game. The problem was the Tiandihui. When Yang Xuan was dealing with the Taiping Army uprising, another Tiandihui uprising suddenly appeared, leaving him confused and in chaos.

The loss was even worse than last time!

Yang Xuan was quite frustrated, so he closed the game and prepared to go out for dinner. Hearing that a new mutton restaurant had opened nearby and it had a good reputation, Yang Xuan wanted to go there and try it out.

it's getting dark.

As we walked out of the dim elevator, we were greeted by the harsh music of square dancing. There were also curses from upstairs, which seemed to be cursing these energetic dancers.

Yang Xuan also hates square dancing. But this is an old community after all, with many elderly people and many young people renting houses.

This time, the cursing upstairs seemed to be particularly intense. Someone actually threw something from upstairs. It seemed to be a beer bottle. It fell not far from Yang Xuan, and the glass shards were scattered all over the floor.

Yang Xuan felt disgusted: It was enough to curse, but why did he throw things away? Someone must have drunk too much and was throwing things under the influence of alcohol.

He subconsciously raised his head to see the source of the falling object. Unexpectedly, a vase fell on his head.

Yang Xuan fell into a pool of blood on the spot.

After an unknown amount of time, Yang Xuan woke up in a daze.

A sad voice sounded intermittently in Yang Xuan's ears:

"A good official's son who joins the Heaven and Earth Society is a criminal of the imperial court. Nowadays, the government is visiting the bandits everywhere. Soldiers come to pick them up with tickets, handcuff them with chains and leave...

"Your brothers from the Heaven and Earth Society have all been imprisoned. They were beaten by soldiers until their faces were red and swollen, and their mouths were bleeding. They were also bundled into a ball with handcuffs and shackles, and put into cages like pigs and dogs...

"The government has issued an order that those who are eldest brothers and masters in the Tiandihui will be punished by death first; those who visit and trouble others will be executed by beheading; those who visit and become bandits will be hanged and executed...

"That time, those who were waiting to be punished were sent thousands of miles away from Xinjiang. The water in that place turned into ice, and it was extremely cold. They suffered from freezing and hunger, and they had to be whipped and beaten by him. How could the southerners withstand it...

"Young master, you must not be willful again this time. For your sake, I begged grandpa to sue grandma, and my legs were really broken. However, participating in the meeting is a serious crime, and the officials dare not release the young master easily..."

The man spoke intermittently, and Yang Xuan was confused. He opened his eyes and struggled to get up. The man stopped talking and quickly came over.

Yang Xuan took a closer look and saw that this man was wearing Qing Dynasty clothes and had a greasy braid.

He turned around and found that he was in a dark prison. He was also wearing a long mandarin jacket from the Qing Dynasty, and there seemed to be some blood stains on it. He also had a long braid, and his hair was a little messy.

What on earth is going on? Could it be that he has traveled through time?

Yang Xuan felt pain in his head. Soon, the pain became more and more intense, and another memory flooded into Yang Xuan's brain, and the two memories gradually merged together.

My mind gradually became clearer.

It turned out that Yang Xuan's soul traveled to February 1850 and inhabited another Yang Xuan with the same name and surname.

This Yang Xuan is not well-known in history, and only four words are left in the history books: "Life is unknown."

But Yang Xuan's grandfather Yang Yuchun was a big shot and a famous general in the mid-Qing Dynasty.

Yang Yuchun served in the Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang dynasties, and ranked first among the generals in the Jiaqing and Daoguang dynasties.

Since Jiaqing, Yang Yuchun began to take charge of his own affairs, leading the army to suppress the Sichuan-Chu White Lotus Rebellion, the Tianli Rebellion, Zhang Ge's Rebellion, etc., and was awarded the title of First-Class Zhaoyong Marquis. Because he was given the posthumous title of "Zhongwu", people often called him

"Marquis Yang Zhongwu".

The title of marquis in the late Qing Dynasty was extremely valuable. When Zeng Guofan quelled the Taiping Rebellion, he was only awarded the title of First-class Marquis of Yiyong.

Yang Yuchun's eldest son was Yang Guozuo, but he failed to seize the title. He was promoted to Maozhou Yingdusi, Sichuan, and was given the title of deputy general. He was just a fourth-rank green camp military attache.

Yang Guozuo's eldest son was Yang Yan, who died young. His second son was Yang Xuan.

Yang Xuan was not good at the imperial examination, lacked discipline since he was a child, liked flying eagles and lackeys, and often interacted with people in the world.

Yang Guozuo was working as a military attache in Sichuan, but he was quite unsatisfied. His younger brother, Yang Guozhen, was granted the title of Marquis Zhaoyong and was serving as the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang at this time. Yang Guozuo took Yang Xuan to Fuzhou to visit his younger brother and planned to ask his brother to find a job for Yang Xuan.

When passing through Guangzhou, Yang Xuan was greedy for the prosperity of Guangzhou and insisted on visiting Guangzhou. He had close contacts with the local Tiandihui Zhizhen Hall.

It happened that the government was suppressing the Tiandihui Zhizhentang, and Yang Xuan was implicated and was imprisoned in Guangzhou Prison together with a group of Tiandihui gang members.

After figuring out the cause and effect, Yang Xuan was a little bit dumbfounded. He was a middle-aged social worker who had accomplished nothing. He liked to play the game "Civilization" and read history books, but he felt helpless about the reality.

Unexpectedly, fate played a big joke on Yang Xuan. The soul-traveling plot that often appears in Internet articles actually happened to him.

What's even more absurd is that Yang Xuan likes to study history and play the Qing Dynasty script in "Civilization 6". This time, he actually traveled to Guangzhou in 1850 and was imprisoned.

In the game "Civilization 6", Yang Xuan rarely won the Qing Dynasty scenario. This time, he traveled to the Qing Dynasty in 1850 and personally experienced the internal and external troubles of the Manchu Dynasty.

However, the late Qing Dynasty, when domestic crises were increasingly worsening, was also the starting point of China's modernization. In the late Qing Dynasty, the old feudal order was severely impacted, which also provided a once-in-a-lifetime historical stage for those with great ambitions.

Under the fog of history, countless possibilities are hidden: "Hong Xiuquan, a failed scholar, became the king of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, turning the entire south upside down; a senior member of the Hunan Army who had a bad academic performance made meritorious deeds on the battlefield and was appointed as a feudal official...

…”

Yang Xuan was somewhat hopeful that he could change the history of the late Qing Dynasty, but he was also somewhat afraid that history would bite him back.

Yang Xuan’s “life is unknown” in the late Qing Dynasty, and Yang Xuan 170 years later is also unknown. What kind of new person will be created by the combination of the two?
Chapter completed!