On March 17, the first year of Chongzhen, 22-year-old Zhu Youjian woke up from a nightmare.
In the dream, he hanged himself on the coal mountain. It was March 19, the 17th year of Chongzhen, when Li Zicheng captured Beijing. Before his death, he had been emperor for seventeen years, killed Wei Zhongxian, replaced fifty cabinet ministers, and watched the Ming Dynasty collapse bit by bit.
After waking up, he found that every detail in the dream was extremely clear - the battle report in Liaodong, the refugees in Shaanxi, the IOUs from the Ministry of Revenue, and the party disputes in the court. He even remembers the feel of the rope as he hung himself.
He made a decision: not to kill Wei Zhongxian.
But he doesn't trust him either. He kept Wei Zhongxian by his side as a knife, but secretly started to lay another line.
Song Yingxing, a clerk in the Ministry of Revenue, quietly left Beijing with a few humble accounting offices and went to various provinces to audit the accounts. No one knew what they found. They only knew that a few months later, secret reports were sent to the Qianqing Palace.
Li Hao, an old man from Dongchang, disguised himself as a businessman and went south to Fujian to find out the details of the pirate Zheng Zhilong. While the court was still debating whether to recruit An, Zheng Zhilong's son had already gone to Beijing to study, and the money from sea taxes had already begun to be escorted.
In the dilapidated side room of the Assistant Office, several old accounts were checked repeatedly. Every stroke of ink and every life is recorded on the yellowed page.
This is a secret power grab. It does not rely on impassioned remarks in the court, but only on "mixing sand" step by step. While the Donglin Party members were still waiting for the emperor to express his position, their cronies had been quietly transferred;
