On a warship on the Yangtze River in the early spring of the third year of Xianfeng, when Li Xiucheng woke up from chaos, certain images were lingering in his mind - not the revelation of Heavenly Father, but something clearer and heavier: about the blood of betrayal, about the dead end of a lonely army, and about the smoke and dust of the final collapse of faith.
He knows too much that he shouldn't know. Know when the cracks appear under the scepter, know the suspicions that loyalty will encounter, and know the fate hidden under those high-spirited faces. But this time, he's no longer just a pawn being pushed around in a chess game.
Between the fog of faith and the razor edge of reality, he walks a cautious and solid path. During the Western Expedition, he improved military discipline and tried out new agricultural and commercial policies in the south of the Yangtze River. At each turning point in history, he made choices that seemed to follow the trend, but actually concealed long-term plans. When the storm swept through Tianjing, he preserved his strength in the name of "defending the portal" and quietly became the most indispensable pillar of Shanhe after the disaster.
However, his real plan lies further north. He led his troops out of Anhui, not directly towards the capital, but like a wedge into the hinterland of the Central Plains. He wants to cut off the bloodline that maintains the empire and try to establish a new order on the scorched earth. Downplay Heavenly Father and Heavenly Brother, and replace it with "pacifying the people and cultivating the land"; be cautious in contacting foreign countries in exchange for a chance to breathe. Every step is testing another possibility of history.
But it is destined to be a lonely march. A far-reaching layout may seem like timid wandering in the eyes of colleagues, while sober judgment always seems out of place in a fanatical atmosphere. What was even more painful was that when he tried to change the direction of the tide, he found that he was being reshaped by the current.
