Usurping Sui

Usurping Sui is an alternate-history web novel by Feng Hua Jue Shi, serialized on Qidian from May to October 2010 and completed there, about 745,500 characters in total and more than 240 chapters. The story is set in the chaotic late Sui dynasty, when rival warlords rose together. Qin Chong, an employee of a small modern company, is struck by lightning in an accident and by a strange twist crosses into the late Sui, his soul entering the body of Liu Wuzhou, the rebel king who later held Mayi. With a modern person's perspective and temperament, he first builds public opinion, then raises troops at Mayi, opens the granaries to distribute grain and win the people's hearts, and successively recruits and wins over fierce generals such as Li Jing and Yuchi Jingde, fighting repeated offensives and defenses against the attacking Yanmen garrison and gaining a foothold in bloody battle. As major developments in the Guanzhong region unfold—Li Mi's letter, Li Yuan's uprising in Taiyuan, the infighting at Wagang—Qin Chong gradually integrates the surrounding separatist forces, subdues the Xue clan, wins over Luo Yi, and enters direct confrontation with the Li Tang group. The main line of the book is the crossover protagonist's struggle for supremacy with the peerless Li Shimin, starting from the single corner of Mayi, while a succession of late-Sui figures such as Li Mi, Xu Maogong, Dou Jiande and Wang Shichong appear in turn. The story ultimately moves toward the fall of the Zheng state, the collapse of Li Tang, Li Shimin's surrender and the unification of China, ending with the Turks moving south and a golden age beginning. The work's language is light and humorous, its battle scenes are passionate, and it is a fairly representative example of early Qidian historical crossover fiction.