The Iron-Blooded Southern Ming

After the upheaval of the Jia Shen year, 1644, crows crowded the glazed tiles of Nanjing's Forbidden City.

A modern military engineer and programmer transmigrates into the body of the Hongguang Emperor, Zhu Yousong. Caught in the factional struggle between the Donglin Party and the Ma-Ruan clique, with the eighty thousand arrogant, battle-hardened troops under Zuo Liangyu on one side and Dorgon’s two hundred thousand ironclad Eight Banner cavalry on the other, this last emperor, armed with a modern outlook, launches a desperate counterattack amid the heady perfume of the Qinhuai River.

When Duoduo waters his horses in the Yangtze, the walls of Nanjing bristle not with white flags of surrender, but with a web of fire woven from improved breech-loading cannons and flintlock muskets. As the Zheng family’s seagoing ships bring in fine iron from the South Seas and Li Dingguo arrives under cover of night with the remnants of the Great Western Army, a sun-and-moon banner slowly rises through the morning mist at Xiaolingwei...