When the morning bells of Fengyang's Huangjue Temple shattered the last wisp of cooking smoke, the beggar's stick knocked open more than the gates of countless homes. It also heralded the bloody dawn of a dynasty. Zhu Yuanzhang, once a hungry young novice before the temple's clay Buddha, carried the leftover gruel from his begging bowl as he picked up a rusted blade amid the beacon fires of the Red Turbans in Haozhou. He could never have imagined that these hands would one day raise him to the Dragon Throne, or be stained with the blood of his brothers.
