(Time of transmigration: one month before Beijing fell in the late Ming. The person transmigrated: Crown Prince Zhu Cilang.)
Li Zicheng’s army has Beijing under siege, yet for a time it can’t take the city. Just as his men resort to one vicious scheme after another, an unexpected figure appears.
“For the people of this land, for all of China, the Ming must fall. I’ll leave Beijing to you, Li Zicheng!”
“Impossible! How could my Ming dynasty fall? I have a crown prince who knows how to raise money, and I’m constantly helping disaster victims. Who could possibly bring down my Ming dynasty… What? You’re saying the crown prince betrayed the Ming?”
The Chongzhen Emperor couldn’t take it anymore.
Li Zicheng, as the Great Shun army storms into the city: “…” (I’m delighted, but stealing my line is not what a doomed crown prince should do.)
When Zhu Cilang first transmigrated, he didn’t feel that way at all.
Everything was happening in the late Ming: droughts, locust plagues, a Little Ice Age, and epidemics raged. The Shanxi merchants betrayed the country, officials were corrupt, the north and south were at odds, factional strife never stopped, the imperial clan drew its monthly stipends, the treasury ran dry, rebel bands were everywhere, and the Jurchen watched like tigers ready to pounce. Every one of these things left the Ming struggling for breath.
Zhu Cilang gradually realized that even if he could solve all these problems, the Ming would most likely still succumb to the dynasty’s fated end after three hundred years.
Beijing fell, and the decrepit, worn-out Ming perished. With it, the dynasty’s many outdated institutions could finally be discarded or changed.
From the ruins, I shall break through and rebuild, forging a brand-new “Ming dynasty at its peak!”
A lot of mess Abandon the book directly