The Wild Hermit's Treasure

In the first year of Shunzhi, the Shanhai Pass campaign ended in the rout of the Great Shun army, and Li Zicheng supposedly died at Jiugong Mountain. No one knew that the body the Qing army identified was only a substitute. The real Chuang King shaved his head and became a monk in the mountains of southern Hubei, taking the name Fengtian Yu. Before they parted, he entrusted his nephew Li Guo with the national treasures he had accumulated over a lifetime, the Chuang King’s jade pendant, and the last hope of Great Shun. From then on, the great general Li Guo was no more. A monk called Ye Fu, burdened with a secret, vanished into the misty depths of western Hunan. The Li River flowed upstream as nine boats sailed west. Ye Fu and a hundred veteran soldiers hid the treasure among Tianmen Mountain’s sheer cliffs, secluded valleys, and hidden caves. But while treasure could be concealed, human hearts could not. Qing spies followed like shadows, traitors lurked within, and hopes of restoring the dynasty grew ever dimmer. When the last veteran willingly sealed himself inside a cave, Ye Fu stood atop Tianmen Mountain, gazing toward the Central Plains and bearing three centuries of solitude alone. Three hundred years later, fourteen Ming-era gold artifacts unearthed at Guanyin Mountain brought this buried history back to light. Yet the bulk of the treasure has still not been found. This is a story of loyalty and perseverance, the final breath of a dynasty, and a secret forever guarded by the mountains. What Ye Fu hid was never gold or silver, but the last breath of an era doomed to fall.