Zheng the Butcher

Zheng the Butcher is a Water Margin-themed time-travel novel by the author Fengzhi Bamei, running to more than two million characters and now completed on an online platform. Zheng Fei, a modern young man, attends the last job fair before graduation and, on the bus back to campus, fights a pickpocket to stop a theft; he loses consciousness and wakes to find himself no longer in his own world but inhabiting the body of Zheng the butcher, the man known in Water Margin as 'Zheng the Western Pass Bully.' The opening line, 'When injustice appears, let out a roar,' both explains his time travel and echoes the classic episode of 'boxing the Western Pass Bully,' so that a fate originally sealed by three punches from Lu the lieutenant is rewritten. The story begins in Weizhou in the late Northern Song, where Zheng Fei runs a butcher's shop, gradually establishes himself, and maneuvers around Lu Da and his circle, first seeking to survive and then to thrive. He goes on to befriend heroes of Liangshan and the wider martial world, moving step by step from the marketplace to the jianghu and the court: gathering allies, joining Liangshan, accepting amnesty and entering service, and then leading troops against foreign enemies, in an attempt to avert 'the catastrophe that sank the land of China' in the original world. The title rests on Zheng the butcher, a minor character, and from this bit player who was written to die it re-performs the Water Margin story. The book runs from marketplace livelihoods to mountain stronghold gatherings to frontier warfare, with its main line in the growth and choices of 'gathering heroes, ascending Liangshan, entering the court, fighting foreign foes, and bringing peace to the realm.'