My Identity as a Ming Prince Was Exposed, and Chongzhen Made Me Emperor

On the sixth day of the fifth lunar month in the sixth year of the Tianqi reign of the Ming Dynasty, a bizarre explosion occurred near the Wang Gongchang gunpowder depot in the southwestern part of Beijing.

On the same day, Zhu Cijiong, the third son of Emperor Xizong, was so frightened by the Wang Gongchang explosion that he died before reaching the age of one. He was posthumously honored as Crown Prince Xianhuai.

In the tenth year of the Chongzhen reign, in Xi'an Prefecture.

At the foot of the Qinling Mountains stood a village, with a spacious courtyard in its midst.

A beardless man in gray crouched on a stone roller in the courtyard, smoking a dry pipe with a copper mouthpiece. Wisps of smoke curled from his lips.

After a long while, he looked toward a handsome young man, his eyes full of the weariness of age.