The world did not return gently.
It shattered.
Feng Yun woke to the taste of iron.
Not metaphor—iron.
Blood had pooled at the corner of his mouth, drying against cracked lips. The sky above him was not a hospital ceiling, nor the soft glow of a monitor. It was vast, smoke-stained, and streaked with ash drifting like dead snow.
For a long moment, he did not move.
The last thing he remembered was light from a computer screen—strategic overlays, supply lines, calculated flanking paths in a Three Kingdoms simulation he had played too many nights in a row. He remembered leaning back in his chair. He remembered thinking—
If Cao Cao had struck Wuchao earlier, the probability curve would shift by at least twelve percent.
Then—
Nothing.
Now—
The earth beneath him trembled.
A horn sounded in the distance.
And someone was screaming.
He pushed himself upright.
The body he inhabited was not the one he remembered. His hands were rougher. Nails broken. Calluses layered thick across palms and fingers. He wore padded armor stiff with sweat and dirt. A wooden-shafted spear lay beside him.
Around him, men ran.
Not in formation.
In fear.
Yellow cloth wrapped around foreheads flashed between smoke and chaos.
The Yellow Turbans.
His breath caught.
This was not a dream.
It was not a simulation.
There was no interface. No restart.
A soldier stumbled past him, face streaked with soot. "Get up!" the man shouted hoarsely. "They're breaking through the left!"
Breaking through.
Left flank collapse.
His mind responded automatically.
Assess terrain. Locate banner. Identify command node.
But there was no minimap.
Only dust.
A riderless horse tore past him, dragging broken reins. An arrow struck the ground inches from his knee.
He did not think.
He grabbed the spear.
The weight felt real.
Too real.
A Yellow Turban fighter emerged through smoke, eyes wild—not villainous, not monstrous. Just desperate.
The man swung a crude blade downward.
Feng Yun raised the spear shaft instinctively, wood cracking under impact. The force traveled through his arms—sharp, vibrating, painful.
Pain.
This was pain.
Not a numeric deduction.
His breath shortened.
His mind screamed that this should not be happening—that wars belonged behind glass screens and measured percentages.
The rebel swung again.
Feng Yun moved sideways, awkward but fast. His body reacted before his thoughts finished forming. The spear tip drove forward—not elegant, not heroic—
Just precise.
The rebel fell.
Silence struck him harder than the impact had.
The man's eyes were still open.
Clouded.
No respawn.
No retreat.
No reset.
The battlefield roared around him, but something inside Feng Yun went quiet.
War was not a game.
It was irreversible.
A horn sounded again—closer.
A banner bearing the Han insignia wavered ahead.
He moved toward it.
Not because of loyalty.
Not yet.
Because structure meant survival.
By nightfall, the clash had dissolved into scattered retreat.
He sat beside a smoldering cart, spear across his knees.
His arms trembled.
Not from exhaustion.
From understanding.
The world he knew—probability curves, unit stats, resource allocation—had not vanished.
It had been stripped of abstraction.
Here, miscalculation meant death.
Here, courage without structure meant collapse.
He closed his eyes briefly.
Something stirred at the edge of perception.
Not visible.
Not audible.
But present.
A sensation like a distant mechanism aligning.
War-Strategy Adaptive System initializing…
The words did not appear in light.
They formed in awareness.
He inhaled sharply.
So.
Not entirely abandoned.
A second pulse followed.
Host identified: Feng YunStarting Status: Anonymous Infantry
Anonymous.
Accurate.
He almost laughed.
The system did not promise power.
It did not grant strength.
It observed.
As he now must.
He opened his eyes to the darkened battlefield.
Men whispered prayers.
Some wept quietly.
Some sharpened blades in silence.
He flexed his fingers around the spear.
If he survived long enough—
He would not survive by instinct alone.
He would study.
He would measure.
He would adapt.
Survival was not victory.
But it was the first form of wisdom.
And he would not die ignorant.