I dropped this novel and recently picked it back up... now I remember why I dropped it. Yes it's super tough to translate this without having a good grasp on chinese history and literature, otherwise you'll be googling all day, but the quality of translation is just not up to par when it comes to things like "The Hundred Schools of Thought" for example. Oh well... still an OK novel for history nerds.
So the fact that this game has made a modern person believe in the "Five Elements", when the game is meant to train him to be a commander in the FUTURE, kind of makes you think...
What if the stupidity of the game in the context of the worldbuilding is not actually stupid at all? What if instead of Earth being about to blow up, humans just got evicted by aliens - which is what convinced the different powers to work together and leave the planet instead of arguing over who will claim the new one?
Maybe that's why they want to use a historical game instead of a futuristic one to train futuristic leaders, so that humans will regress in technology and not be a threat to the aliens...
But more likely it's just bad world-building
King_Morty