The Bastard Who Pierced the Heavenly Mystery

After being laid off from his corporate executive position, modern-day graduate Li Wuke perishes in an avalanche while trekking through Yubeng—only to be reborn in the Warring States period as Tian Wen, a despised bastard son of the Qi royal house. Branded an ill omen for his fifth-day-fifth-month birth and abandoned by his father Tian Ying, he grows up in the back alleys, cutting his teeth on Liubo gambling tables where he masters the primal rules of strategic competition: reading opponents, calculating odds, and weaponizing information asymmetry. When he finally returns to the clan, his uncanny skill at reading character elevates him above his legitimate siblings in the fierce succession struggle, winning him the fief of Xue. There, Tian Wen establishes "Hanlu Pivot"—a vast intelligence network of carrier pigeons, encoded accounts, and street-level informants that stretches across the contending states. His discovery that the revered Jixia Academy scholar Chunyu Kun is a core operative of the clandestine "Tianji Bureau" ignites a covert war over truth and dominion. Over the following decades, Tian Wen navigates the courts of Qin, Qi, and Wei, trading lethal moves with Gongsun Yan, Su Qin, and other bureau elites as he transforms from a forsaken outcast into the legendary Lord Mengchang—master of three thousand retainers and architect of the grand coalition against Qin. Yet when he finally pierces the secret of "Siming," the bureau's supreme leader, he realizes that the heavenly schemes he has spent a lifetime chasing are merely the gate to an older, deeper prison. Armed with his ability to see through every princely plot, he comes to understand that the one who peers into the chessboard may, in the end, become the board itself.