My Father Is Cao Cao, But I Never Wanted the Succession

In the first year of Xingping (194 AD), Cao Cao faces a catastrophic crisis—Chen Gong welcomes Lü Bu, who stabs him in the back at Yanzhou. The entire province rebels, and a locust plague and drought reduce the land to cannibalism. Just before this disaster, a time-traveler named Cao Shuo is on his way to Yanzhou. Can he turn the tide? First, he needs to survive the journey to Juancheng. From start to finish, Cao Shuo holds only one belief: "In poverty, don't eat human flesh; in success, don't eat beef. Small fortune brings peace; great fortune brings ruin." He wants nothing more than to be a carefree, good-for-nothing son of a warlord—Cao the Second. Yet fate insists on treating him as a brilliant dragon among men, a pearl that cannot be hidden. Is even lying down and doing nothing a crime? Fine. At most, he will assist his father and elder brother in ending the chaos early—but that's all he can do. He never schemes for power, never steals credit, never picks sides, never stands out, and above all, never wants to be heir. But everything backfires. The lower his profile, the higher his prestige. The less he wants to manage affairs, the more his subordinates rally behind him. The less he shows his edge, the more terrifying his battlefield results. The more he just wants a stable life, the larger his influence grows. And the less he cares about succession, the more the court sees him as their only hope. Then one day, he looks back and finds himself standing atop the entire era. "Prince of Jin! We are ready—let us fight one more battle for the brothers!" "Eight hundred men, nothing more! The winner becomes crown prince, the loser a rebel!" "The fate of the realm and the Wei dynasty rests on your shoulders, Prince!" "Only you can lead us to victory—you are the true Son of Heaven!" Cao Shuo is dumbfounded. He only ever wanted a quiet, comfortable life—why is that harder than ascending to the heavens?