The history of Guanzhong was surprisingly easy to follow. It was less a tangled web of politics and more a long list of wars, shifting borders, and people solving problems with armies instead of conversations.
After the Qin Dynasty got wiped off the map, Xiang Yu inherited a rather inconvenient situation. Liu Bang had been exiled to Hanzhong, and if left alone long enough, he would almost certainly march back north.
Xiang Yu's solution was about as subtle as a hammer. He grabbed three former Qin generals who had already surrendered, carved Guanzhong into three separate kingdoms, and crowned each of them king.
The King of Yong.
The King of Sai.
The King of Di.
Their job was simple: sit between Liu Bang and the Central Plains and make sure he stayed exactly where Xiang Yu had dumped him.
The locals, never ones for formality, quickly dubbed the trio the "Three Kings of Qin." Over time, the title lost its connection to the men themselves and morphed into a plain geographical placeholder. Eventually, "Three Qins" stopped referring to three kings and became the name of the entire Guanzhong region.
History, as always, had a habit of recycling labels until everyone forgot what they originally meant.
Several centuries later, Emperor Wu of Han reorganized the capital region and created three major administrative offices: Jingzhao Yin, Left Fengyi, and Right Fufeng. Together, they governed the lands surrounding Chang'an and served as the empire's first line of support for the capital.
People, being wonderfully consistent across the centuries, once again ignored the official explanation and came up with a simpler nickname.
The Three Auxiliaries.
Eventually, those offices suffered the same fate as the Three Kings of Qin. The titles outlived the people who held them and gradually became the names of the regions themselves.
Fufeng sat to the west of Chang'an. The Wei River flowed through its lands from west to east, and the ancient Chengguo Canal siphoned that river water to irrigate a grid of farmlands.
Fufeng might not have possessed the absolute pinnacle of real estate in the Guanzhong basin, but it was undeniably a land of rich soil and fertile fields. A place practically designed to breed prosperity.
But prosperity, as it turned out, was fragile.
Ever since the Yellow Turban Rebellion shattered the peace decades ago, ambitious and ruthless men from Yongzhou and Liangzhou had repeatedly marched east through Guanzhong. Every time another ambitious fellow decided he deserved to rule the empire, Fufeng, sitting right on the western edge like an unfortunate doormat, was usually the first place his soldiers trampled flat.
The locals had probably reached the point where they could identify invading armies by the sound of the hoofbeats alone.
That miserable history, however, produced one very fortunate outcome.
The only reason Ma Jun was standing safely in Hanzhong today was because Pang Tong and Fa Zheng had captured the region with astonishing speed.
Had they failed to smash through Yangping Pass and secure Hanzhong when they did, the refugees fleeing Guanzhong would never have poured south. Ma Jun would have remained in the north, right in the middle of the coming war. And considering his luck, there was a very real chance history would have remembered him as "that brilliant inventor who unfortunately happened to be standing in the wrong place when two armies decided to fight."
Thankfully, fate had finally done the poor man a favor.
Thinking about the sheer, absurd luck of this entire sequence of events, Zhuge Liang let out a long sigh. A wave of relief washed over him so potent he nearly sagged against the doorframe.
He straightened up and regarded the young man clutching the wooden model like it was a newborn child.
"I am the Military Advisor General under the command of Liu Bei," Zhuge Liang said, his voice carrying genuine warmth. "My name is Zhuge Liang. Courtesy name Kongming. I hail from Yangdu in Langya."
Ma Jun gave a polite nod.
Paused for a second.
Tapped the small wooden model in his hands with a scarred finger.
"V-very... wonderful." Ma Jun blurted out.
And with those two words delivered like a man tossing a coin to a street performer, Ma Jun completely and utterly ignored the legendary strategist standing in front of him.
He reached down, grabbed his chisels, his hand saw, and his collection of iron files, and began preparing to build out the mechanical modification Zhuge Liang had just proposed.
The greatest mind of the generation had been dismissed.
Categorized.
Filed under "pleasant interruption" and discarded.
Fa Zheng stepped closer to Zhuge Liang and lowered his voice.
"Deheng has suffered from a severe stuttering affliction since he was a young boy," Fa Zheng whispered, a faint note of apology in his tone. "The condition has improved somewhat over the years, but his speech remains truncated. Abrupt. He prefers to keep his words brief."
Zhuge Liang nodded slowly.
He understood perfectly.
And frankly, he did not mind in the slightest.
He watched the tools dance in Ma Jun's hands, and a deep sense of admiration blossomed in his chest.
What a pair of hands, he thought.
He also wanted to use this moment to gauge the true depth of Ma Jun's technical expertise.
Talk was cheap.
Sawdust was honest.
Zhuge Liang knew his own contribution to the water wheel project was purely theoretical. He had simply offered a conceptual idea to improve the efficiency of the circular mechanism, a thought experiment sketched on the back of a logistics report.
But for Ma Jun, turning theory into physical reality was apparently as easy as breathing. Easier, probably, given how little the young man seemed to breathe while working.
Ma Jun picked up a fine-toothed saw and effortlessly sliced a small block of wood from a larger plank.
He swapped the saw for a heavy chisel, carving out a rough geometric shape with a few aggressive strikes.
Then came the file.
He began sanding the edges with a slow, precise rhythm.
Sawdust flew into the air.
Wood shavings stuck to his rough tunic and tangled in his hair like confetti at the world's most depressing parade.
He did not notice any of it.
His entire universe had shrunk down to the wooden gear forming in his palms.
He was completely in the zone.
Anyone watching could see that Ma Jun did not need to pause and think about the next step. The finished blueprint was already burning in his mind, fully formed, screaming to be let out.
Every strike of the chisel was decisive.
Every stroke of the file was calculated.
Zero hesitation.
Zero second-guessing.
Just hands doing what hands were born to do.
Watching the young man's obsessive focus, the smile on Zhuge Liang's face grew wider.
The satisfaction radiating off the chief strategist was practically visible, like heat shimmer off summer stone.
Finally, Ma Jun finished the modification on the miniature water wheel model.
He flicked the wooden mechanism with his thumb.
The gears engaged perfectly.
He watched the rotation, analyzing the results of his labor with the critical eye of a man who had already found three things he wanted to improve.
Zhuge Liang did not waste another second.
Strike while the iron was hot.
Strike while the sawdust was still settling.
"Deheng," Zhuge Liang asked smoothly, leaning in just slightly. "Would you consider joining Liu Bei's camp to formally study and develop the science of engineering?"
Because Zhuge Liang already had industrial plans brewing in his head, big ones, the kind that kept him up at night staring at ceilings, his pitch was direct.
No flowery preamble.
No philosophical warm-up.
Just the goods, laid out like a merchant selling gold to a man who had been digging in dirt his whole life.
"Under our banner, we actively promote the study of engineering. We place heavy emphasis on mathematics. We deeply investigate the physical principles of how things work. We are currently drafting formal regulations and standards for all mechanical disciplines."
He listed off the assets with the practiced ease of a man who had rehearsed this pitch in the mirror.
"Down in Jingzhou, our engineering academies manage iron smelting workshops and construct warships. Over in Yizhou, our engineering bureaus operate sugar refineries and paper mills. And once we reclaim Chang'an, the Imperial Academy itself will officially open a dedicated department to teach engineering to the next generation."
For Ma Jun, this entire day felt like a bizarre, increasingly unhinged dream.
A mechanical problem that had tormented him for days, days of sleepless nights, splintered fingers, and muttered curses at uncooperative wood, had just been solved in seconds by a stranger in a crane-feather cloak.
The excitement bubbling in his chest was already hard to contain.
And now, listening to this elegant strategist lay out a grand vision for craftsmen, for people like him, Ma Jun had only one coherent thought left in his brain.
...Is this what heaven looks like?
Fleeing to Hanzhong was the best decision of my entire life.
Last year, the military campaigns ravaging Guanzhong had taken the recovering farmlands of Fufeng and smashed them back into ruin with the enthusiasm of a man kicking over a sandcastle. At that time, the local peasants found themselves paralyzed by a truly spectacular multiple-choice question regarding their survival.
Option one: Flee east and surrender to the Cao army. The downside? Cao Cao would immediately strip them of their freedom and assign them to brutal military farming colonies as state-owned serfs. Congratulations, you now belong to the government.
Option two: Flee west into the desolate provinces of Yong and Liang. The downside? They would live in constant terror of getting trampled by Ma Chao or slaughtered by nomadic Qiang cavalry raids. Sleep well!
Option three: Flee south into the mountains of Hanzhong and listen to a strange warlord preach the bizarre religious doctrines of the Five Pecks of Rice cult. The downside? Well, at least the rice was real.
It was a miserable list of choices. The kind of list that made you nostalgic for the good old days when your only worry was whether the harvest would come in.
But before the peasants could fully commit to despair, a geopolitical earthquake solved the problem for them. The cult leader Zhang Lu lost control of Hanzhong and fled north to Chang'an, bringing the most spectacular news possible to the terrified people of the Three Auxiliaries.
Hanzhong belonged to the Liu family once again.
Furthermore, rumors spread like wildfire that one of the chief architects behind kicking Zhang Lu out of the mountains was Fa Zheng. Fa Zheng. A local boy. A son of the prominent Fa clan of Fufeng. Their boy, essentially, had come home with an army and a grudge.
Combining those two facts, the displaced peasants made a rapid decision. There was nothing left to discuss. Pack the bags, grab the kids, leave the chicken, and march south.
Ma Jun had joined that chaotic southern migration in a daze. He had originally assumed he was just swapping one muddy field for another. Figured he would keep farming, keep his head down, keep surviving.
But shortly after arriving, his eyes locked onto something that made his farming ambitions evaporate like morning dew. He noticed the military engineers constructing circular water wheels along the muddy banks of the Han River, following detailed blueprints.
The concept of harnessing the violent current of a river to power heavy machinery ignited a fire in Ma Jun's brain so intense it practically singed his eyebrows. He was obsessed. The complex systems of gears and driveshafts earned his glowing approval.
He spent days observing the machines. Studied their operation. Reverse-engineered the logic. Went home and carved miniature models to test the physics by candlelight. Very quickly, he understood the fundamental principles driving the wheels. Better, probably, than the men who had built them.
Eventually, a few of the military water wheels broke down under the stress of the river, because rivers are rude like that. Ma Jun volunteered his services to the frustrated soldiers. He fixed the machines twice. That display of casual, almost insulting genius had placed him squarely on Fa Zheng's radar. And that connection led directly to this muddy riverbank meeting with Zhuge Liang today.
At this exact moment, Ma Jun understood roughly half of the fancy political vocabulary Zhuge Liang was deploying. The other half bounced off his skull like pebbles off a helmet. But he understood the core message perfectly.
Craftsmanship could be called an academic science. It would be respected. He would no longer be mocked as a low-class tinkerer by the arrogant bureaucrats up in Chang'an who could not tell a gear from a turnip.
That single promise was enough for a lifetime.
Ma Jun desperately wanted to shout that he was willing. Wanted to accept the offer immediately, on the spot, before this elegant stranger changed his mind and wandered off to recruit someone with better vocabulary.
But the sheer joy short-circuited his brain. His stutter hit him like a brick wall thrown by a very cruel god.
"I... I... I..." Ma Jun stammered, his face turning the color of a ripe tomato as he struggled to force the syllables past his teeth.
Watching the young man lock up entirely, Fa Zheng started sweating on his behalf. He genuinely wished he could just reach over, borrow Ma Jun's mouth, and accept the job for him.
Yes, he will take it. Wonderful. Lovely. Moving on.
Zhuge Liang simply offered a warm smile. He waved his feather fan gently, signaling Ma Jun to relax, breathe, take his time. Then he smoothly pivoted to a new topic to ease the tension.
"Have you possessed this passion for engineering since you were a boy, Deheng?" Zhuge Liang asked casually.
Ma Jun nodded with violent enthusiasm. His neck might have cracked.
"Tell me, Deheng," Zhuge Liang continued, his tone turning thoughtful. "Have you ever pondered what the ultimate limit of engineering might be?"
Hearing this question, the frantic excitement in Ma Jun's eyes faded into confusion.
When it came to debating classic literature, interpreting ancient texts, or discussing political theory, Ma Jun's talents were generously described as "below average." Furthermore, living in this chaotic era, watching warlords pop up and get slaughtered like wheat in a harvest season was beyond his comprehension. He did not understand the grand game. Did not care to. The grand game had never fixed a plow for him.
Because of those limitations, Ma Jun had always kept his head down. Focused solely on the physical world. He was grateful he had a natural gift for mechanics, because it allowed him to fix plows and looms to help his neighbors survive. That was enough. That was good.
But the ultimate limit of engineering?
Looking at the blank expression on Ma Jun's face, Zhuge Liang decided it was time to throw some fuel onto the fire. A lot of fuel. The entire woodpile.
Liu Bei's faction was currently overflowing with brilliant military tacticians and genius administrators. But when it came to heavy industry and mechanical engineering, their thirst for talent was bordering on the pathetic.
The situation was so dire that Liu Ba, a master of economics and strategy, was currently spending his free time touring the factories in Chengdu, desperately trying to memorize manufacturing techniques, studying advanced mathematics, and reading the ancient texts of the Mohist engineers. All so he could teach basic science classes to the kids at the academy. A man of his caliber, reduced to explaining how levers worked to twelve-year-olds.
"The physical strength of a human being has a hard limit," Zhuge Liang said, his voice dropping an octave. "But the power generated by engineering is completely limitless."
He looked past Ma Jun, staring out across the rushing waters of the Han River, envisioning a future that did not yet exist.
"Given enough time, enough resources, why should we not rely on engineering to achieve the impossible? Why should we not build machines that allow us to soar through the cosmos above? Why should we not construct vessels to explore the darkest abysses of the underground? Why should we not circumnavigate the oceans to map the very edges of reality? Why should we not use gears and iron to replicate the miracles of ghosts and gods?"
Standing off to the side, Fa Zheng listened to this vision of the future. His mind flashed back to the bizarre visions of the distant future he had once glimpsed. He felt a chill run down his spine. He understood exactly what Zhuge Liang was aiming for.
The man was not recruiting a mechanic. He was recruiting the first brick in a cathedral.
For Ma Jun, however, the speech was a bomb going off in his imagination. A beautiful, glorious, absolutely devastating bomb. His excitement spiked so violently that his stutter went into complete overdrive. He opened his mouth, but only tight, squeaking noises came out.
Fa Zheng decided to save the poor kid from giving himself an aneurysm.
"Deheng, if you are willing to join us, just nod your head," Fa Zheng instructed. "Then pack your tools and follow Kongming."
Ma Jun turned his head and nodded so fast and so hard he looked like a mechanical woodpecker attacking a particularly stubborn tree. His neck was going to file a formal complaint.
Fa Zheng and Zhuge Liang exchanged a knowing smile. They had hooked a fish. A brilliant, stuttering, sawdust-covered fish, but a fish nonetheless.
Zhuge Liang did not waste time celebrating. He turned smoothly.
"Follow me, then," Zhuge Liang instructed. "I will have you escort me to find young Jiang Wei."
---
Meanwhile, deep within a private study room in the Hanzhong administrative compound, Jiang Wei was currently suffering.
His primary master, the brilliant and absolutely terrifying Pang Tong, had recently departed for a military campaign in the western provinces of Yong and Liang. However, Pang Tong's absence did not result in a vacation for his student. Not even close. If anything, Jiang Wei felt like his workload had somehow increased, as if the universe looked at an unattended child and thought, you know what he needs? More homework.
The daily syllabus was a nightmare dressed in respectable clothing. Physical conditioning in the martial arts arena until his legs turned to jelly. Memorizing dense military strategy manuals until the words blurred into meaningless ink soup. And just to ensure he suffered completely, various stern scholars were brought in to lecture him endlessly on the Confucian classics, because apparently beating a boy with a bamboo cane was not enough, his soul also needed disciplining.
The net result of this academic torture was currently on display. Even though his formal classes for the morning had concluded, Jiang Wei remained glued to his chair like a barnacle on a particularly stubborn rock. He refused to move. He knew, with the bone-deep certainty of a child who had learned from experience, that the second he left this room, someone would hand him a wooden sword or a heavier book.
Staying here was the only way to steal a fraction of peace. A tiny, pathetic sliver of not-being-yelled-at.
He rested his chin on the solid oak desk. Rolled his head back and forth in bone-deep boredom.
Then, a spark of inspiration hit the young boy.
He slapped his hands on the table, sat up straight, and pulled a fresh sheet of parchment toward him with the gravity of a man drafting a declaration of war.
He grabbed a brush, dipped it heavily in dark ink, and carefully traced three characters.
Jiang Boyue.
I officially have a courtesy name now!
Little Jiang Wei propped his chin on his hands again and stared at the ink drying on the paper. He honestly had no idea what was going through Pang Tong's head. Giving a kid a courtesy name this early in life was highly unusual. Most boys did not get one until they were adults. But then again, expecting Pang Tong to follow normal customs was probably asking too much.
A wave of annoyance washed over him. He remembered that his master had marched off to fight a war in his own hometown, his hometown, leaving him stranded behind a desk in Hanzhong like a forgotten lunch pail.
The injustice was staggering. The audacity. The sheer, unmitigated gall.
He refused to put the brush down. He dipped it again. His memory flared, and he wrote down two more characters with aggressive, slightly vindictive strokes.
Pang Shiyuan.
He stared at his master's name. Glared at it, really.
Then the strict, unsmiling face of Fa Zheng drifted into his mind. He hesitated for a second, just a second, before writing three more characters.
Fa Xiaozhi.
Jiang Wei puffed out his cheeks and blew a stray hair out of his eyes. He felt like his masters were getting lazier by the minute. When they had rushed to give him a courtesy name, he had assumed they had thought of something profound. Something poetic. Something that would make future historians nod sagely and whisper, ah, what a meaningful name.
Instead, they just slapped him with the standard "Bo" designation, referencing the boring "Bo, Zhong, Shu, Ji" system used to denote the eldest brother. It was the most generic, paint-by-numbers, absolutely zero-effort name possible.
You might as well just call him "Kid Number One."
Wait a minute, Jiang Wei thought, scratching the side of his head with the brush handle. Do I not technically have another master floating around somewhere?
He dug through his memory. He recalled the name that Pang Tong was constantly mentioning, usually accompanied by a dramatic sigh, a sarcastic comment, or the phrase "that insufferable man."
Jiang Wei dipped the brush one last time and wrote the name down.
Zhuge Kongming.
At that exact moment, the heavy wooden doors of the study were shoved open.
Jiang Wei's survival instincts triggered instantly.
He launched himself out of the chair like a coiled spring, like a cat that had just heard a cucumber hit the floor. In a blur of motion, he grabbed a heavy bamboo scroll, slammed it onto his forehead to look like he was deep in thought, and began shouting his alibi before he even saw who entered.
"Commander Huang!" Jiang Wei yelled, his voice cracking slightly. "I assure you, I was merely lingering here to contemplate a complex philosophical question! I have no intention of slacking off on my martial arts training! None whatsoever! I was just about to leave! This very second!"
A brief pause followed.
Then, Jiang Wei heard a soft chuckle.
Jiang Wei froze.
He knew virtually everyone who worked in the Hanzhong compound. He knew their footsteps. He knew their voices. He knew which ones carried bamboo canes and which ones carried disappointment.
He was absolutely certain that the chuckle he just heard belonged to a stranger.
Slowly, carefully, he lowered the bamboo scroll from his face. He peeked over the top edge like a squirrel investigating a suspicious noise.
Standing in the doorway was a tall, elegant man with an aura of absolute, unshakeable calm.
Standing right next to him was Fa Zheng, who was currently staring at Jiang Wei with an expression of weary resignation, the look of a man who had already accepted that his afternoon was going to be weird.
Lurking behind both of them was a young man in rough clothes who looked about twenty years old. This third guy was staring blankly at the ceiling, clearly lost in some internal calculation involving gears or water flow or the exact tensile strength of bamboo. He had sawdust in his hair.
But Jiang Wei's eyes locked back onto the man in front.
This guy was weird.
He shared a bizarre habit with Pang Tong. Despite the freezing winter air, this stranger was casually holding a feathered fan.
However, unlike Pang Tong, who looked slightly ridiculous fanning himself in the cold like a peacock having a midlife crisis, the fan looked perfectly natural in this man's hand. It amplified his aura, making him look like an immortal who had wandered down from the mountains after immortality became boring.
Zhuge Liang raised a hand, gracefully cutting off whatever reprimand Fa Zheng was about to deliver. He walked into the room, gathered his robes, and crouched down until his eyes were level with the young boy's.
He offered a disarming smile.
"Hello there," Zhuge Liang said softly. "I am Zhuge Kongming. I am your master."
Jiang Wei's eyes widened so far they practically took up his entire face. His eyebrows shot up so high they nearly touched his hairline. He pointed a trembling finger at the elegant man.
"Wait," Jiang Wei blurted out, zero filter applying to his brain, absolutely none, the filter had left the building hours ago. "Are you the master who can literally curse people to death and throw Daoist magic fireballs?"
Behind Zhuge Liang, the strict facade of Fa Zheng shattered completely. He bit his lip hard, his shoulders shaking as he desperately tried to suppress a fit of laughter. He turned his face toward the wall. His ears were red.
Even Zhuge Kongming experienced a brief system failure. His flawless smile cracked, revealing a flash of genuine, unfiltered shock. The fan stopped moving. For one glorious second, the immortal descended from the clouds looked like a man who had just been asked if he could, in fact, produce a rabbit from his sleeve.
But he recovered quickly.
The mask slid back into place. Smooth. Seamless. Almost.
"Those stories," Zhuge Liang said smoothly, his voice carefully devoid of emotion, "are entirely the fictional ramblings of Shiyuan. You must not take them seriously."
He gave his head a tiny shake. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a dark note was made in a mental ledger regarding Pang Tong. A very dark note. With underlining.
He smoothly pivoted the conversation, asking Jiang Wei to detail his current academic schedule.
As Jiang Wei recited the list of his daily requirements, Zhuge Liang found himself shaking his head. It was obvious that because Pang Tong was not physically present to monitor the boy, the local scholars and military instructors had decided to fill every waking second of Jiang Wei's life with grueling, soul-crushing work.
The schedule was brutal. It ran from sunrise until late at night. They even had him doing heavy conditioning right before bed, which was less "martial training" and more "child labor."
"This ends today," Zhuge Liang declared with quiet authority. "From now on, you will attend your standard classes in the morning. However, the moment you finish your midday meal, you report directly to me."
Hearing those words, Jiang Wei instantly threw his loyalty for Pang Tong directly into the garbage.
No hesitation.
No remorse.
The trash bin was already open.
"Master!" Jiang Wei cheered brightly, bouncing on his toes. "It is actually time for the midday meal right now! Would you allow me the honor of showing you to the dining hall?"
He was practically vibrating.
"Master, what exactly are we going to do this afternoon?"
---
Meanwhile, deep in the rear courtyards of the Hanzhong administrative compound, Military Commander Huang Quan stood with his hands on his hips.
He squinted up at the sky.
The sun had definitely passed the noon marker.
Definitely.
No ambiguity there.
He lowered his gaze and stared at the empty dirt expanse of the martial arts training ground. A vein pulsed in his forehead. He kicked the dirt in frustration, sending a small cloud of dust into the cold air.
"That little brat Jiang Wei!" Huang Quan growled. "He skipped class again!"