After six hundred years of wandering through dreams, a scholar from the future arrives in the Yan residence and becomes Zhu Gaohuang, the third son beneath Zhu Di, a prince unrecorded in the histories and fated to die young.
In the final years of Hongwu's reign, the princes' precarious position is already clear. Beneath the surface, the imperial family harbors sharp ambitions, and the struggle for the throne could erupt at any moment. The Ming dynasty is also mired in the chronic ills of eunuch influence, factional strife, border threats, and isolationism, trapped in the age-old cycle of dynastic rise and fall.
Armed with a millennium of historical insight and strategies to save the realm, he lies low and plans his moves in the prince's residence deep within the palace. Through intrigue and bloodshed, he breaks through every crisis and ascends the throne. With reform, he reverses the dynasty's fate and escapes the cycle of imperial decline. He secures the throne and establishes a new golden age, becoming a Ming dynasty founder who defies fate and whose achievements endure for generations.
