Late Ming: The Funeral of Imperial Power

In the seventeenth year of the Chongzhen reign, the realm lay in ruins. Liu Boyong, a mercenary, awoke at the end of the Ming Dynasty to find Zhang Xianzhong’s thirty-thousand-strong army closing in on Fuzhou. He tied up his father, who was determined to die for his sovereign, raided a gambling den, and spent thirty thousand taels of silver to buy the lives of eight hundred desperate fighters. After a day and a night of bloody combat, he rescued more than ten thousand civilians from hell itself.

Retreating to Tushan, he established a base, trained a new army, and promoted craftsmanship. The million taels of gold and silver in the Shu Prince’s estate became the means to arm his forces against the Qing, while the mysterious craftswoman Lin Wan held the blueprints for a flintlock rifle.

When Qing cavalry shattered Shanhai Pass, when Zhang Xianzhong slaughtered his way through Chengdu, and when his father knelt facing north and wept, “Your servant has failed to repay the imperial favor,” Liu Boyong stood atop Tushan and declared to forty thousand soldiers and civilians:

“From today on, there is no emperor here, and no court.”

“There are only people who want to survive, and the blades in our hands.”

“In this world that devours people, I’m going to give it a new way to live!”