The Great Ming Rebel

In the fifteenth year of Hongwu, in Guangxi’s miasma-ridden lands.

Li Chang’an opened his eyes to find himself a laborer forced to build a prince’s palace. Blood blisters layered over old calluses. The moldy rice was mixed with sand, and the overseer’s whip was soaked in brine, leaving a bloody welt with every strike. On a stormy night, the foreman rushed to meet the deadline and drove hundreds of men into a raging flood up to their waists. This wasn’t construction. It was a death sentence.

All Li Chang’an wanted was to survive.

But when the foreman seized the last half-sack of moldy rice, when an overseer beat a sick laborer to death, and when that whip came down on him, Li Chang’an tightened his grip on the iron pick in his hands.

“We were all born to human parents. Why should your lives matter, while ours are worth less than grass?”

That night, the rain came down in torrents. With eight hundred laborers on the brink of death, he used sharpened stakes and digging picks to seize weapons, kill the officials, and burn their contracts of servitude.

“From this day on, you are no longer slaves. We are the Revolutionary Army!”

When the news reached Nanjing, Zhu Yuanzhang was furious. Han Guan, Guangxi’s regional commander, sent thirty thousand troops to crush the uprising, but Li Chang’an set up wagon barriers and trenches, then unleashed volley after volley of gunfire. They won a decisive victory, and Han Guan barely escaped with his life. Lan Yu came and was defeated. Zhu Di came and was defeated too.

With Guangdong and Guangxi secured, he abolished the monarchy, established a federation, redistributed land, and abolished taxes, opening an unprecedented era.

He crossed the Yangtze and sailed south across the seas. At the Battle of Penghu, he broke the Dutch fleet. He landed in Kyushu and brought the Japanese domains to heel. In the Indian Ocean, he fought a decisive battle against a European coalition. The guns of ironclad warships were trained on the setting sun of the old world.

“I will not be an emperor. I want to make sure there will never be another emperor on this land.”

His name was Li Chang’an. The world had denied him a chance to live, so he would give it justice in return.