Chapter 1: The Wormhole Descends
The protagonist of this story—or rather, one of them—was named Xiao Zishan.
Born in the late 1970s, Xiao Zishan was ordinary in every conceivable way: ordinary family, ordinary looks, ordinary talents, and certainly not the type to burn with ambition. His academic record reflected this perfectly. When university admissions expanded, he rode the wave and became a college student like countless others.
After graduation, he drifted between companies in the Pearl River Delta, accumulating the usual scars of working life. Unscrupulous bosses had cheated him. Unrealistic dreams had failed him. Eventually he landed a decent-paying position at a foreign enterprise and settled into the comfortable rhythm of earning his wages. Six or seven years slipped by this way. Before he knew it, he was thirty years old, still renting someone else's apartment, with few hobbies beyond a fondness for history and obscure books. By the time our story begins, he could barely recall his ex-girlfriend's face anymore—he still belonged to that crowd celebrating Singles' Day every November 11th.
On the evening where our story opens, the weather was foul. The pitch-black sky flickered with lightning, a pattern that had persisted for nearly half a month. Sometimes the flashes were followed by torrential downpours; other times there was only rumbling thunder. Rumors of an impending earthquake had circulated so long that people had grown numb to them.
Xiao Zishan stepped off the bus with a yawn, eyelids puffy, legs weak, hair unkempt—the disheveled bearing of the working poor. He had not been home in over a day. As a newly minted regional manager, preparing for an inspection by his superiors had kept him chained to the office, poring over reports for hours on end. The reimbursement expenses were particularly nightmarish.
To call Xiao Zishan a corporate parasite would be a gross injustice. He had held this position for barely three months. During his six or seven years at the company, he had remained stuck at the entry level of regional sales representative while layer upon layer of leadership above him was harvested like scallions—cut down crop after crop—and he persisted like the root that remained.
Three months prior, leadership had rotated yet again, leaving behind the customary pile of inexplicable reports and invoices. Only this time, he was the one appointed regional manager.
If this promotion had come two years earlier, he would have wept with gratitude. But now? Now Xiao Zishan wanted only to say to all those leaders, past and present: Go to hell.
Under the global financial crisis, the company had been half-paralyzed since the previous year. Familiar colleagues in the regional office had vanished one after another. The remaining business was so light he could handle it alone with leisure to spare. This appointment, coming without any salary adjustment despite years of stagnation, without any directives for developing new business—well, after six or seven years in the trenches, it wasn't hard to read the writing on the wall. This was the prelude to shuttering the regional office. He was merely a caretaker. Once all affairs were wrapped up, he would be packing his bags.
But the paperwork still had to be done—if only to keep collecting that unchanged salary for a few more months.
Xiao Zishan sighed for perhaps the twentieth time that day. He carried a large travel bag stuffed with promotional giveaways that had accumulated in the office over the years: kitchen aprons, undershirts, toothbrushes, ballpoint pens. All crude little commodities. Apart from a few items, he had no real use for any of it. Yet he had greedily taken everything—when poor, one's ambitions shrink—a saying that fit him perfectly.
His rented room was reasonably clean and tidy. After a shower, his spirits unexpectedly perked up. He booted up his computer and went online.
Orson Welles once said the lottery is the painkiller of the poor. The internet, then, was the fountain of joy for people like Xiao Zishan—whether online games, BBSes, or the web novels he devoured daily. Before entering the workforce, Xiao Zishan had been something of a literary youth, devouring all manner of miscellaneous books indiscriminately. He had also liked to dabble in writing, but lacking natural talent, he never made a living from it.
He regularly visited a handful of BBSes. He was no celebrity on the forums, but the eclectic hodgepodge of information, theories, and knowledge they provided—the debates, the arguments, the kaleidoscope of human nature, even the performances of certain hypocrites—were far more interesting than the mask-laden workplace.
As usual, he checked the hot posts of the day.
"I have discovered a wormhole leading to the Ming Dynasty! It's absolutely true!"
Seeing this title, Xiao Zishan couldn't help but chuckle. Were people so addled by reading time-travel novels these days? Or were they so dissatisfied with their circumstances that they yearned to start over in another world?
Then he noticed the post was by Director Wen. Director Wen was one of the "survivalist fanatics" on this BBS whom Xiao Zishan rather admired. Beyond his broad knowledge, his meticulous approach to time-travel and survival scenarios was truly rare. It was a shame Director Wen didn't write time-travel novels—if he did, Xiao Zishan would certainly follow them. The pirated versions, naturally.
"Another of Director Wen's wild ideas, I suppose." Xiao Zishan casually clicked on the post.
With that click, his world began to change.
To put it in clichéd terms: the wheel of fate began to turn.
One week later.
"This is the wormhole?" Xiao Zishan peered cautiously at the luminous object before him. Strictly speaking, it wasn't quite a proper circle—more of a faintly blue glow—not far from what he had imagined a wormhole to be. The difference was that its light was not intense, and its size was much smaller: only about the dimensions of a bathroom mirror.
"It's quite small," said Wang Luobin. Like Xiao Zishan, he was among the first to communicate with Director Wen and decide to come see for themselves.
"Applying pressure to the edge can enlarge it." Wen Desi sat on the closed toilet lid. With three people crammed into the bathroom, it was rather cramped. "This opening can be expanded or contracted—all you need is symmetrical force along the diameter. Enlarging and shrinking is synchronous in both timespaces." He paused. "When the opening is reduced to 210 millimeters, the wormhole closes and can no longer connect the timespaces."
"Can you really travel back and forth through it?" In Xiao Zishan's experience—literary experience, that is—time-travel was strictly a one-way affair. Either you were hit by a car, struck by lightning, or at mildest got lost somewhere. The common feature was that you never came back.
"If I couldn't return, I wouldn't have been able to make that post, and you wouldn't be standing here now," said Director Wen. "I estimate that after crossing over, the destination corresponds to the location where the crossing originates."
"You should have bought a lottery ticket, Director Wen," Xiao Zishan murmured. "Discovering a wormhole in your bathroom has a lower probability than winning the jackpot."
"Isn't this the jackpot?" Wen Desi laughed contentedly. "Is there any lottery that can win you an entire world?"
"Director Wen, didn't you always say: 'Solo, bidirectional, low-profile time-travel is the true way'?" Wang Luobin recalled the old BBS discussions about crossing over.
"That's right." Wen Desi pointed at the wormhole. "Do you know what's on the other side? It's a world!" He waved his arms excitedly. "Through this, I can possess an entire planet, an entire universe!"
"You're going to conquer the world all by yourself?" Xiao Zishan expressed serious doubt.
"That's why I made that post..." Wen Desi seemed somewhat reluctant to admit it. "Besides, the other side is not a pleasant timespace."
"What timespace is it?"
"Roughly the Tianqi reign. I found Tianqi Tongbao coins."
Xiao Zishan and Wang Luobin both drew a sharp breath. The new world Director Wen had found was an era overrun by eunuchs.
(End of Chapter)