Transmigration

February 24, 1862, Germany.

Late at night, intoxicated stars gave off a faint glow in the black, silent sky.

The view turned southward to Germany, where the biting early-winter wind lashed the branches and leaves of the roadside trees in the ancient city of Hechingen, making them rustle.

Streetlamps the color of decaying wood linked into patches of light and shadow, illuminating streets paved in broad strokes of dark bluish-green flagstones. Few pedestrians walked the roads, while hollow ghostly sounds drifted from the black alleys.

Through the scattered, interwoven windows of the houses lining both sides of the street, one could almost hear people whispering among themselves.

It was dinner time for Hechingen's citizens. Candlelight swayed from side to side within the dark, weathered wooden window frames, dancing freely like natural-born dancers.

Following the road forward and slowly leaving the district behind, a road leading out of the city suddenly opened up. Along the low slope, a lavishly decorated carriage slowly departed the city and headed toward distant hills, atop which stood an ancient castle, solemn and imposing.

Before long, the carriage reached the castle gates. Once the armed guards recognized the visitor, they opened the gates, and the carriage slowly entered the castle.

The man seated inside was none other than the ruler of the Hechingen region, Prince Constantin of the Kingdom of Prussia.

Hechingen had originally been a small state in southeastern Germany and the birthplace of the House of Hohenzollern. It was now part of Prussia's Hohenzollern Province.

One of the decision-makers who had pushed for Hechingen to join the Kingdom of Prussia had been Prince Constantin himself, whose full name was Constantin von Hohenzollern.

After a day of exhausting travel and work, Prince Constantin had finally returned home and was just preparing to go back to his room and rest.

Suddenly, hurried footsteps came from the corridor. The arrival was Keno, the old butler.

"Master, this is bad! Something terrible has happened!" Keno reported to Constantin in utter panic.

"What happened, Keno? Don't panic. Tell me slowly," Constantin said calmly.

"His Highness the Prince suddenly fainted while riding today. The doctor is examining him now. Master, please go and see him at once!" Keno hurriedly explained.

The moment he heard that something had happened to his son, Constantin could no longer maintain the majesty of a man in power. Ignoring his exhaustion, he hurried with the butler to his son's bedroom door.

The servants waited outside the door, not daring even to breathe, cautiously awaiting their old master's arrival.

Constantin had nothing to say to them. He pushed open the bedroom door and entered, only to find his son Ernst lying on the bed.

Seeing that Ernst, who had already "awakened," was safe and sound, Constantin finally let go of the worry hanging over his heart. Looking at the physician waiting nearby, Constantin asked, "Doctor, how is he?"

The physician did not dare delay and respectfully replied, "Your Highness, the prince is not in serious condition for now, but the cause of his fainting has yet to be determined. It was most likely caused by excessive fatigue. It would be best to ask His Highness later."

Constantin carefully approached the bed, took his son's small hand in his own, and asked, "Ernst, how do you feel?"

Ernst felt utterly muddled, with a heaviness in his chest. When he suddenly heard someone speaking to him, he did not dare act too deliberately and softly said, "Uh, my head feels a little confused. I'm still not fully awake."

"Then do you remember who I am?" Prince Constantin asked anxiously.

"Of course, Father. It may be an aftereffect of fainting. It shouldn't be a serious problem."

Constantin turned to look at the doctor, who immediately replied, "Your Highness need not worry too much. The prince's physical condition was examined before, and he is very healthy. He can rest for a while and then be observed further. If anything arises, I will promptly continue treatment."

Looking at the sky outside, already pitch-black, Prince Constantin thought for a moment before saying, "Mm, very well. You may all leave. Let the prince get some proper rest."

Everyone quietly withdrew from the room. As the old butler left, he closed the door behind him. Only then did Prince Constantin, finally breathing a sigh of relief, realize that his back was drenched in cold sweat. He placed a hand over his chest and devoutly said, "Thank the Lord for His protection!"

As the sole heir of the Hechingen line of the House of Hohenzollern, Prince Ernst had been Constantin's darling since childhood.

Constantin had only had this one child at the age of fifty. Not long after Ernst's birth, his wife Eugénie de Beauharnais had passed away after catching a chill. Thus, Prince Constantin cherished Prince Ernst all the more.

Of course, Constantin had historically had no descendants. From the moment Ernst was born, the timeline of history had changed, a new branch sprouting from the main trunk.

At that moment, Ernst did not even dare breathe as he lay on the bed, playing ostrich, because he alone knew that he was actually a transmigrator. Today, the memories of his previous life had suddenly awakened, causing him to faint. In that life, he had been one of the "people of the motherland." Though he could not claim to have worked himself to the bone, he had at least devoted himself until death. He occasionally read novels to relieve boredom and vented his emotions in chat groups.

Of course, Ernst had already been here for twelve years. Only today had he learned that he was a transmigrator. Did this count as living another life? It rather felt like Zhuang Zhou dreaming of a butterfly.

Fortunately, the knowledge and common sense he had learned in his previous life could not deceive him. Together with historical evidence—the already deceased Emperor Napoleon, who had once shaken the continent; the loose German Confederation; Prussia, still developing; the Austrian Empire, whose grandeur remained; and his own identity as a member of the House of Hohenzollern...

Speaking of the House of Hohenzollern, it was certainly renowned. However, Ernst's family differed somewhat from the illustrious Hohenzollerns of Prussian Brandenburg. His family belonged to a junior branch of the Hohenzollerns, located in what had been southwestern Germany in his previous life. Nearby was another junior branch, Sigmaringen. It and Ernst's Hechingen belonged to the Swabian branch, and Sigmaringen happened to be something Ernst knew a little about.

Historically, it had schemed for the Spanish throne and would later produce an emperor of Romania. Looking at it that way, every branch except his own was an eminent family recorded in history.

If one asked why the Hohenzollerns of Hechingen had no role to play, well... because the historical Hechingen line had died out. But Ernst's arrival had changed history.

While Ernst was still sorting through his thoughts and memories, Constantin had already recovered his senses and began asking, "Do you feel better, Ernst?"

"Yes, Father. I think after I sleep, I'll be full of life and vigor again," Ernst replied with feigned ease.

"As long as you are fine. You are to inherit the title in the future, so do not put too much pressure on yourself. Even if you muddle through life, that is all right. I do not ask you to strive upward, but you must grow up healthy. Pay more attention to rest, eat more healthy food, and do not imitate those wastrels and playboys in their excessive indulgence..."

After rambling on and on, Constantin finally stopped. He tucked Ernst's blanket around him, told him to rest well and call the servants if anything happened, then rose and left the room.

The candlelight flickered faintly, illuminating the dim walls as the room fell into silence.

Ernst curled up beneath the covers to warm himself further and began sorting out his thoughts.

In his previous life, Ernst had held a promising job. His company had sent him to Africa as an engineering consultant, and life in Africa had been boring. He often moved along with the construction sites.

The places where he worked in his previous life had basically been isolated wildernesses, where power and internet outages were frequent and supplies sometimes ran short. Fortunately, the salary had been decent enough.

His days in Africa had greatly changed Ernst's understanding. The place where he had worked in his previous life was Tanzania, a distant African country.

His time working in Tanzania had made Ernst see Africa anew. Before personally going to Africa, influenced by media and news reports, he had thought of Africa as synonymous with backwardness, poverty, harsh natural conditions, and turmoil.

But after truly working and living there, Ernst overturned his earlier views. Most information online painted only a part of the picture as though it were the whole.

In terms of environment alone, Tanzania's temperatures and rainfall conditions were better than those of his hometown on the North China Plain.

In his original understanding, Africa had been unbearably hot. Vast tropical rainforests, endless grasslands, and enormous deserts like the Sahara Desert had been deeply imprinted in Ernst's mind. Yet when he arrived in Tanzania, he discovered that temperatures there ranged from the teens to thirty degrees Celsius—not cold, not hot. The rainy season also brought abundant rainfall each year, with excellent heat and moisture conditions.

Tanzania was an obscure small country. Because of his work, Ernst had begun to familiarize himself with it. Comparing information found online with reality, he discovered that the country was surprisingly remarkable.

Although it lay in the tropics, its plateau terrain instead made it a livable place, much like the Brazilian Plateau.

The land was flat, vegetation dense, and savannas predominated. This also changed his perceptions, because Africa's grasslands conflicted with his traditional conception of grasslands.

Before seeing a savanna with his own eyes, Ernst had naturally imagined every grassland in the world to resemble the Mongolian Steppe.

But when he arrived in Africa, Ernst saw a different kind of scenery. Savannas were a unique landscape combining trees and grassland, remarkably pleasing to the eye. Their water and heat conditions far surpassed those of the Mongolian Steppe. Ever since childhood, history had described Mongolia as the bitterly cold land north of the nation, while Africa's savannas were true natural paradises.

Farmers there could generally obtain decent harvests, and that was under rough cultivation methods. The greatest trouble for local farmers was likely the difficulty of drawing water for irrigation, along with the lack of water conservancy projects and basic farmland irrigation systems.

The living standards of the locals were not too poor either. Even a relatively rough way of life allowed impoverished Africans to find contentment in peace.

Because they lived in tropical grasslands, fruit and meat could supplement their diets to some extent. Combined with a rudimentary smallholder economy, their living standards were even a little higher than those of peasants during the final years of ancient East Asian dynasties.

Of course, attitudes toward life were also an important factor. Over the past century of colonial history, Westerners had forcibly dragged them from primitive hunting lifestyles into modern society.

African ideas had not transformed in time. The complex, refined, and seemingly self-evident survival model of East Asians was difficult to find expression in Africa.

Africa's industrial conditions also had a notable characteristic: its mineral resources were not as outstanding as the internet claimed, Tanzania being only one example.

It was a country that exported mined resources, yet many of its major mineral resources were not actually as abundant as imagined. It had coal, iron, copper, and petroleum, but compared with true resource powers, it had rather little.

Many resources did not rank highly worldwide, but its extremely low level of industrialization made its mineral resources seem abundant.

Ernst remembered East Asia as a region poor in mineral resources, but that was actually related to East Asia's high industrialization. Yet if one compared actual mineral reserves, Tanzania was utterly inferior to East Asia.

Taking coal, iron, and petroleum alone, East Asia possessed world-class major deposits of all three. Even its weakest category, petroleum, had several major oilfields that ranked among the world's best.

Before petroleum was discovered on its eastern coast, Tanzania had also counted as a country poor in oil. Yet Tanzania was not the small country people traditionally imagined.

In terms of land area, it covered 940,000 square kilometers, nearly one-tenth of East Asia's size. But deserts in East Asia's northwest alone took up nearly a quarter of its land, along with frigid high-altitude plateaus difficult to develop and countless mountain ranges. Only the east possessed considerable agricultural development potential.

Tanzania's main body was plateau, but its elevation was not especially high and its terrain was relatively gentle. The equator also crossed through it, bringing suitable temperatures and moderate rainfall. These conditions instead made it one of Africa's renowned agricultural countries. Tanzania's overall natural agricultural conditions were probably second only to Nigeria in Africa.

In terms of population, Tanzania was also internationally recognized as a populous country. It had already surpassed fifty million people and was still growing rapidly. Yet Tanzania still possessed much uncultivated land, its fishery resources had not been fully developed, and its population limit lay far beyond that.

As for industrial conditions, although its mineral resources were not particularly abundant, that depended on whom it was compared with. At the very least, a group of small and medium-sized European countries could only stare after it in the dust. It had more than enough resources to meet the needs of basic industrialization. Africa's mineral resources as a whole were not especially rich compared with other continents. Resources were concentrated in South Africa and West Africa, as well as North Africa, whose petroleum resources stood alone. Tanzania's mineral resources were merely middling even within Africa.

Tanzania's transportation was also fairly good. It lay on the Indian Ocean's traditional commercial routes, and Dar es Salaam was one of Africa's few well-known major ports. Before the Suez Canal opened, it had been an important global commercial hub, a pearl on the shores of the Indian Ocean. The Omani Empire, which had risen abruptly in history, had established an outpost there—the Sultanate of Zanzibar.

From this, one could see that Tanzania's conditions in every respect were not bad. So why was its level of development so low?

Before Ernst went to work in Africa, influenced by traditional media, he had believed there was only one reason for Africa's poverty: Africans were lazy and depended on the heavens for their livelihood.

But after coming to Africa, Ernst realized how one-sided that thought was. It was merely an outward appearance.

Many factors lay behind Africa's poverty. Before colonizers arrived, the African continent's overall level of civilization had already been very low. The Sahara Desert's isolation had turned most of southern Africa into a desert of civilization. Only West Africa and Ethiopia in East Africa had developed independent civilizations, and they had been heavily influenced by Arabs.

The Bantu people of West Africa had been among the earliest groups to expand southward, but they had only developed the civilizational traits of early states, and their technological level was extremely low. To migrate south, they also had to cross the Congo rainforest and regions like the central African grasslands, where wild beasts roamed everywhere. The Omani Empire's expansion in the region had been limited to Zanzibar Island and the East African coast; civilization had not spread into Africa's interior.

Throughout central and southern Africa, tribal social structures centered on hunting were widespread. Tribes on the Mongolian Steppe had developed political powers under the influence of Central Plains culture, but Africa was a desert of political power. The native inhabitants lived lives struggling against wild beasts.

The arrival of Westerners had forcibly dragged this region, whose primary form was primitive tribes, into the framework of modern society.

From Ernst's own experience, such a destructive approach made it difficult for local natives to integrate into modern social structures. Take the western mountain regions of the Land of Abundance in East Asia: when the Republic was founded, they still practiced slavery. Even after nearly a century of integration and support, it remained difficult to change some of the local people's habits.

Let alone Africa, where the Westerners had not come to alleviate poverty and whose primitive tribal societies had social structures even less advanced than slavery.

In truth, tribal systems had already been extremely advanced institutions for Africans at the time.

In many parts of Africa then, even the most basic forms of family and village still existed. How should one put it? Even lions on the African grasslands existed in such family groups!

Thus, the starting point of African civilization had been very low, nearly equivalent to nothing at all, remaining on the same level as prehistoric civilization.

Under Western guns and cannons, Africa had been forced onto the road toward enlightenment. This was also one cause of the endless conflicts after African independence.

Tanzania, of course, had not suffered the effects of large-scale war. In modern times, Tanzania's overall stability ranked among the best of African nations.

But Tanzanians lacked experience in governing a country, had no history to draw lessons from, began from a low starting point, and suffered from social stagnation. This prevented much overall progress. Though there had been some development, it was negligible compared with the rest of the world, just as later East Asia and the Middle East far surpassed Africa.

Yet compared with other African countries, Tanzania could already be called one of Africa's most successful nations.

Remembering the experiences of his previous life, Ernst could not help sighing. Going from a region with complete infrastructure to work in one with virtually none was a disaster. Later, Ernst had slowly adapted to that kind of life.

Of course, now was not the time to reminisce about his previous life. He had transmigrated through history and returned to modern Europe. A new life was beckoning to him once more, and he was about to seek a place for himself within the torrent of history.