In the seventh year of Chongzhen's reign, the cold wind swept the snow and slapped it on the city bricks of Tongcheng. The bandits crossed the river and went south, and the Later Jin Dynasty knocked on the gate to announce the Great War. The deflation caused by the shortage of silver spread like a plague. Even the streets and alleys of South Zhili were crowded with freezing and hungry refugees - the sky of the Ming Dynasty was about to collapse.
Li Jiulang opened his eyes at this moment and became the humblest servant in the county government. He cleaned up filth and drank scraps every day. Until a dead rat picked up by a wild dog shattered his thoughts of surviving: the bloody urgent report from the postman, the fierce scolding from the squad leader, and the cold-red fingers of the salesman all told him that troubled times are not words in history books, but knives that want to bite people's lives.
There is no golden start, only a rusty shovel; there is no ability to turn things around, only the memory of studying the history of the late Ming Dynasty in the previous life. Li Jiulang knew that if he wanted to survive, he had to start from the cold streets of Tongcheng and walk a different path in this dim light of the Ming Dynasty.
