Chongzhen: Everyone Wants Me to Kill Wei Zhongxian, but I Refuse

Zhu Ming transmigrates into the Chongzhen Emperor. On the first day of his reign, the entire court kneels and begs him to execute Wei Zhongxian. He refuses. The treasury is empty, but Wei Zhongxian can collect taxes. The border troops are unpaid, but the Eastern Depot can investigate corruption. The gentry monopolize the land, but the eunuch faction can tear open a breach. The whole realm calls him a foolish ruler, but he doesn't care. He only knows that in his previous life, Chongzhen killed Wei Zhongxian and, seventeen years later, hanged himself from a crooked tree on Coal Hill.

"After I die, how will I face my imperial brother in the underworld?" The original Chongzhen in his head is at it again.

"You were way too eager to see him in your last life. How about we hold off this time?"

One transmigrator who clawed his way out of the mud, and one idealist raised in the imperial palace. They trade barbs: "The treasury's so empty you could race horses through it, the border troops are so hungry they're ready to mutiny, and the gentry evade taxes more outrageously than my sales figures in my previous life." From mutual hostility, they come to share one pair of hands and rewrite the fate of a fallen dynasty.

No System, no golden finger. Just a transmigrator squatting outside a blacksmith's shop, watching people forge iron; squatting on the imperial throne, arguing until the court falls silent; and squatting beneath that crooked tree on Coal Hill, waiting for it to grow new branches.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.