"Jin Yigui Returns to Dust" is set in the last years of Chongzhen and uses a non-linear narrative to tell the absurd past events in the world of Jin Yiwei. The story revolves around the characters of Jinyiwei thugs Wang Tieniu and Zhao Heihu, swordsman Liu Yidao, eunuch chief Li Chengen and his wife Qin Suyi, etc. It connects independent and intertwined plots such as pawnshop robbery, secret treasure pursuit, accidental ingestion of arsenic-containing elixirs, and martial arts match-fixing. In the troubled times when the court is decaying and the people are in dire straits, violence and banter coexist. Little people struggle in the whirlpool of fate. Some people realize salvation in the midst of killing, and some stick to their friendship amidst absurdity. The work uses black humor to deconstruct the rules of survival in troubled times, uses violent aesthetics to outline the complexity of human nature, breaks the traditional narrative logic, and explores the impermanence of fate and the glimmer of human nature in the troubled times of the late Ming Dynasty.
