In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen’s reign, the realm lay shattered.
The renowned general Sun Chuanting was recalled from prison and given command of the battered Qin Army. Once known as “Hell’s King Sun,” the man who had struck fear into the hearts of rebels now faced a game more perilous than any battlefield: military rations in Luoyang’s granaries mixed with edible clay, rebel firearms bearing the emblem of a prince’s estate, and urns of fallen soldiers’ ashes wrapped in brocade...
Beneath Tongguan’s blood-seeping, cracked walls, bloodthirsty military commanders and powerful gentry families were weaving a web that devoured human lives:
The heads of innocent people killed to claim military merit became silver in the Ministry of Revenue’s ledgers. The funds meant to compensate fallen soldiers were melted down into glazed tiles for the heir’s private residence. Contracts stained with the blood and tears of wives sold and children abandoned bore the private seal of the eunuch supervisor.
As Li Zicheng’s banner bearing the character “Chuang” swept across Henan, secret envoys from the Prince of Qin’s estate were counting cannons in an icehouse.
Sun Chuanting pointed his sword at the three armies:
He would expose the blank entries in the military registers hidden beneath reports of victories over bandits, shatter the gunpowder conspiracy beneath the floors of grain ships, and carve his orders into bloodied fingerprints on pawn tickets.
Once drawn, this sword would not strike the rebels first. It would first cut down the rotten hearts of men!
This was a bloody contest in which no one was innocent:
An old border soldier pawned his last thin coffin just to buy three dou of moldy grain for his warhorse. A frozen female prisoner marked “Class C” lay in a secret passage beneath the prince’s estate, a map of Tongguan’s defenses branded on her chest. When the bronze tally on the tassel of the imperial sword fell to the ground, thirty-six urns of ashes rang out atop the city walls, sounding the final battle of the Great Ming’s star generals against an entire rotting dynasty...
