从部落首领到全球领袖

Richard's experience with time travel was different from others': while most traveled to ancient times with modern advantages, he arrived clad only in animal skins and clutching a stone axe.

Starting from a matriarchal clan, his mission was to develop and sustain a civilization.

Should he establish a feudal system with enfeoffed states, or pursue a centralized empire under a prefectural-county system? Should there be a distinction between the civilized core and the wild periphery, or would savage conquest be the path? Would a hundred schools of thought contend in intellectual ferment, or would all sages unite under one doctrine? Would the people place their faith in a single deity, or would they worship a pantheon of ancestral spirits?

Was bloody accumulation-where cotton and silkworms "devoured" people-an inevitable step, or could compassionate utopian ideals prevail? To enjoy the fruits of civilization, one must first endure its agonizing birth pangs.

Endowed with the ability to be reborn after death, Richard experienced the growth of this civilization through different identities.

As a tribesman, a noble, a slave, an emperor, a commoner, a scholar, a hired laborer, a captain in the age of great voyages, a capitalist during primitive accumulation, a conscript crouching in trenches, or a shadowy mastermind behind massive trusts-each role offered a new perspective, yet the mind behind them all remained the same. What conflicts and revelations would arise when the same consciousness occupied such varied positions?