In the twenty-third year of Wanli, Zhu Cixiang, the seventh son of the emperor, was thrown into the coldest fiefdom at the foot of the Great Wall - Pingcheng. Three thousand households were hungry, a wall was about to collapse, and the court was in arrears with payments for two years.
He is a time traveler and knows that Ming Dynasty still has forty-nine years to live. But he didn't know that he couldn't even last forty-nine days.
On the day when the 150,000 Tatar army invaded the country, a bronze mirror appeared in front of him. It's not the system, it's the contract. There's no talking about tasks, just trading - city walls, weapons, and food can all be exchanged. The price is life, memory, and the fate of the Ming Dynasty.
He signed it.
The first time I signed, my hair turned gray. The second time I signed, I forgot what my mother looked like. The third time I signed, I couldn't remember who I was.
On the wall, he spoke to the air. Zhou Changshi stood behind him, secretly keeping accounts - remembering what he had forgotten, what he had done, and how the city survived. Forty-seven times he forgot Zhou Changshi's name, twenty-three times he forgot his mother, and eleven times he forgot who he was.
The Tatar leader Buzhigude outside the city said: "You are the most terrifying opponent I have ever seen, because you don't care about yourself."
The people in the city only knew that on the day the sweet potato seedlings emerged from the saline-alkali soil, the prince squatted on the field ridge and cried.
Forty-nine years later, Chongzhen hanged himself on Meishan, and the Ming Dynasty fell.
Pingcheng at the foot of the Great Wall is still there.
An old man with white hair sat on the city wall, watching the children fly kites. He has forgotten why he wanted to defend this city, but there is a sentence written in his account book:
"Your Highness, you asked me why I should remember it for you. Because if I don't even remember it, then no one really knows what you have done."
