It felt like he had slept for a century. Zhang Shuo woke up groggily, his head pounding. What came into view was a white gauze curtain and a room carved with red - painted wood.
"Am I not dead?" Zhang Shuo murmured to himself. The scene of the laboratory explosion seemed to be frozen in front of his eyes.
He sat up, and the purple - embroidered brocade quilt slipped off. He was wearing white underclothes and cloth trousers similar to those in ancient costume dramas.
Strange, what's all this?
As he propped himself up to get out of bed, seeing a fair and slender hand made his heart skip a beat. This was definitely not his hand.
In a panic, he raised his hand to touch his facial features. A chill ran through his heart. He wasn't himself!
"Your Highness, why are you up?"
A soft voice came, and then a young girl in a green long dress entered from outside, with a respectful demeanor.
"Lvluo?" The name came out naturally, and a stream of memories erupted like a volcanic eruption.
In an instant, he understood his identity.
His name was still Zhang Shuo, but this Zhang Shuo was the current Seventh Prince. The place he was in was called the Great Qian Kingdom.
Before the Three Kingdoms period, the history of this world was basically the same as the one he was familiar with. But after that, the history became a mess. Now he wasn't sure which dynasty the Great Qian Kingdom was equivalent to.
If one had to compare, it could be said to be like the 17th century of the Ming Dynasty in terms of social structure, with the technological and living standards of the Tang and Song dynasties.
As for other parts of the world, he had no idea. After all, this was a place with poor information circulation.
He had transmigrated. Zhang Shuo had to accept this fact.
Fortunately, he seemed to be a prince and had his own fiefdom.
Unfortunately, his fiefdom seemed to be the most barren one, and it was extremely far from the capital, Chang'an.
What's more, beyond Cangzhou in the northernmost part of his fiefdom was the vast grassland of the barbarian tribes. It could be said that his fiefdom was at risk of being occupied by the barbarians at any time.
Not only that, the current emperor of the Great Qian Kingdom, Zhang Zhongwen, was getting old, but the crown prince was weak and might be deposed at any time. Basically, the position of the crown prince was undecided.
Precisely because of this, the princes were engaged in open and secret struggles, trying to crush each other. They all wanted to put their opponents to death. Although he was in a remote fiefdom, as a prince, he couldn't escape this fate.
The reason he was exiled to such a far - away place was naturally that he wasn't favored by the emperor.
At the same age, he was sent to this place at thirteen. In the past five years, Zhang Zhongwen had never issued an imperial edict for him to return to the capital to pay respects to his parents.
The Sixth Prince, who was one month older than him, was still in Chang'an. Ministers had repeatedly remonstrated for the Sixth Prince to be enfeoffed, but the emperor disagreed.
Besides the Sixth Prince, the Crown Prince, the Second Prince, the Third Prince, and the Fourth Prince were all in Chang'an. Only the Fifth Prince was enfeoffed like him, but his fiefdom, Shu, was much richer than Zhang Shuo's.
After thinking it over, it seemed that the reason for his poor treatment was that his mother had no background in the noble families or powerful clans.
While other princes and princesses were more or less related by blood to the five surnames and seven prominent families of the Great Qian.
"If I'm not liked, so be it. At least I don't have to acknowledge a father for no reason. I can enjoy myself in my fiefdom."
Although he said so, Zhang Shuo's life in the fiefdom was tough.
Not to mention the shortage of supplies and the dilapidated people's livelihood, the crucial point was that these supplies were in the hands of the local powerful families.
These powerful families held absolute power locally. There was even a saying that the common people only knew the powerful families, not the Prince of Qi.
The previous Zhang Shuo was muddle - headed and didn't understand the harm. But he knew clearly that when interests aligned, these powerful families were obedient dogs, but when interests clashed, they were man - eating tigers.
After figuring out the basic situation, Zhang Shuo let out a sigh. He was clearly living in dire straits.
However, when he thought of the reason for his transmigration, a glimmer of hope rose in him.
At the moment of the laboratory explosion, the experimental item, the Tech Crystal, seemed to have directly hit him. And when he was unconscious, he always felt that the crystal was in his consciousness.
The Tech Crystal was an energy crystal, said to be from a pre - historic civilization. During the experiment, not only a large number of black technologies were discove