If history is a wager you’re destined to lose, would you choose to lie flat and accept your fate, or stake everything and gamble against heaven?
Wang Rui, a young man who bungee-jumped at a bar, was about to plunge to his death when the rope snapped. By sheer accident, his soul transmigrated to the first year of the Chongzhen reign in the Ming dynasty, where he became the distant cousin of the eunuch Wang Cheng’en. The moment he opened his eyes, he was already trapped in a desperate situation: within the court, the powerful Wen Tiren watched him like a hawk; beyond it, a severe drought ravaged Shaanxi while the Jurchen cavalry stirred on the borders. And the young emperor Chongzhen, suspicious by nature, was coldly scrutinizing him, this strange man who had “foretold the collapse of heaven.”
