In the sixth year of Chongzhen's reign, Li Cunzhen, a scholar from the south of the Yangtze River, woke up from the disappointment of failing the gold medal list, but fell into the abyss of family ruin and death - his father was imprisoned on charges of "treason", and the Feiyu suit confiscated by the Jin Yiwei destroyed the dignity of the scholarly family. When the hand that used to hold a pen grasped a rusty axe, and when the eye for copying tablets and inscriptions learned to recognize traps, he kept company with rats and insects in the culverts of the capital, pretended to survive under deserters' knives, used the wisdom of the "Mo Jing" to set ambushes and hunt, and calculated people's hearts with strategic logic.
At the point where the world collapsed, he was forced to play a game of wolf and embarrassment with the gangster "Brother Zhang": he exchanged the ashes of burning family letters for trust, used the knowledge of surveying to plan the robbery of the village, and walked on the edge of conscience and survival. From imperial criminals evading arrest to desperadoes participating in plunder, he witnessed the tragic situation of refugees exchanging their children for food, experienced the bloody struggle for power, and even saw the signs of the collapse of the dynasty in the ruins. This diary of the troubled times, soaked in blood and ink, describes how a scholar turned the sage's book into a knife for survival amidst the torn bones of Confucianism and calamity. In the flames of the late Ming Dynasty, he carved a biography of a lonely minister who was neither loyal nor treacherous, just to survive.
