In the third month of the seventeenth year of Hongwu, as the imperial cup of poisoned wine went down his throat, Li Wenzhong saw not death, but half a lifetime spent kneeling before the steps of the throne and crying, “Long live the Emperor.”
When he opened his eyes again, he had returned to the final spring of his life.
The sickbed remained, and the scent of medicine still hung in the air. This time, he would no longer be the sharpest blade in the Zhu clan’s hand, nor would he naively believe that retreat could save his life.
His plan was to let the people of the realm keep thinking of him as the ailing Duke of Cao, to let Zhu Yuanzhang continue seeing him as a “good nephew” who could be taken up or put down at will, and to let the officials of the court believe he was merely a loyal subject, gravely ill and without ambition.
Then, right under everyone’s noses, he would take the flames of war on the northern frontier, the sails on the Southern Seas, and the game of strategy at court, and grasp them inch by inch in his own hands.
