During the Tianqi period of the late Ming Dynasty, the carpenter Emperor Zhu Youxiao was obsessed with cutting, axing and sawing. The eunuch Wei Zhongxian and the Hakka family controlled the government. The party was fiercely fighting and the people were in dire straits. At the same time, under the leadership of Nurhachi and his son Huang Taiji, the Houjin Iron Cavalry who were far away from the customs had become a prairie fire. The Ming Dynasty was in turmoil due to internal and external troubles.
In the whirlpool of this era, a young man named Han Chengying, who started out as the son of a prisoner at the bottom of Jinyiwei, was forced to be involved in a shocking mystery that affected the fate of the empire. He originally wanted to survive in troubled times, but due to a bizarre palace theft, he was forced to embark on the road of survival and finding evidence. From the dark alleys and deep palaces of Beijing, to the mountains of corpses and seas of blood in Liaodong, to the misty towers in the south of the Yangtze River, he relied on his extraordinary agility and tenacity to maneuver among the Jinyiwei, Dongchang, Eunuch Party, Donglin Party and the mysterious Houjin spy network.
This is a road from chess piece to chess player, full of betrayal, sacrifice and choice. How will Han Chengying uncover the layers of mystery and influence the fate of the entire empire while preserving his love and upholding morality?
