Wanli Returns: From the Start, the Entire Court Pleads with Me to Ascend the Throne!

In the Yiyou year, Yangzhou fell, and Qing troops watered their horses in the Qiantang River. The ministers of the Southern Ming knelt in a sea of people, urgently seeking a member of the imperial clan who could take up the banner and ascend the throne, even if he was merely a boy who had been burning with fever for three days.

The moment the boy opened his eyes, he saw the roofline of the Hall of Heavenly Purity. When he sat up, he carried the soul of an emperor who had ruled for forty-eight years.

He was Wanli, Zhu Yijun, the lazy emperor who had gone twenty-four years without attending court. He died, then came back to life in the body of an obscure young boy from a collateral branch of the imperial family. The court mistook him for an obedient puppet, never realizing that the true master of the Ming Dynasty lived inside it.

The State-Defending Cauldron had cracked, and the fate of the nation rested upon him. By reading the aura of others, he could distinguish the loyal from the treacherous and see the hidden designs of the entire court at a glance. At night, he summoned the spirits of the dead for counsel, with Zhang Juzheng and Qi Jiguang appearing in his dreams. He cleared military arrears, trained troops, and restored order to Qiantang. Every deed was a step toward winning back, inch by inch, the empire he had lost.

The entire court urged him to ascend the throne. He declined three times, but in the end, he took up the burden, not for the Dragon Throne, but for the Ming Dynasty. This was a debt Wanli had to repay.

In this life, he would make the entire court beg him to attend the morning audience, and make the tide of the Qiantang River flow northward again.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.