Great Ming: From the Frontier, I Destroy the Qing and Restore the Ming

Gu Zhao, a graduate student of modern strategy, unexpectedly transmigrated into the second year of the Chongzhen reign. He became a low-ranking soldier in the Yansui garrison, owed his pay and on the verge of starving to death while marching to relieve the capital during the Jisi Incident. Outside, Later Jin’s iron hooves stormed the passes and plundered the land; inside, rebel bands rose everywhere and swept through the prefectures and counties. At court, factional infighting raged and ruler and ministers distrusted one another. It was the most despairing of times. Faced with officers embezzling military pay, an indifferent court, and death drawing near, Gu Zhao, armed with the strategic cunning of the “venomous strategist Jia Xu,” knew that failure meant rebellion, while success meant restoring the empire! When his comrades were flogged to death for lack of food, Gu Zhao’s patience finally ran out. He would no longer sit by and await his fate. With a ruthless scheme to sow discord, he set the officers against one another, seized military command amid blood and fire, and launched a mutiny! “The military pay hasn’t come through?” Gu Zhao pointed at the bloated landlords and gentry, and the princely clans richer than nations. “Their money is our pay!” “Too weak to fight the enemy?” Gu Zhao piled mountains of gold and silver before the ranks. “See that? Pick up your blades and take the riches that belong to you!” He wielded poisonous schemes like a blade and human nature like its edge. He allied with the rebels, fought the government armies, and used both open and covert strategies to toy with every enemy in the palm of his hand. From one rebel force in northern Shaanxi to a tide sweeping across the land, he gradually devoured the Ming dynasty, ultimately confronting the Manchus head-on as they entered the pass. This is the story of a nobody who, with strategies beyond his time and ruthless methods, carved out a path to survival in the end times, destroyed a rotten regime, drove out foreign invaders, and rebuilt the world!