[Pseudo group portrait, no system, no extraordinary elements, biased toward serious works]
Emperor Yongchang personally selected eight "new stars" that would illuminate the twilight empire.
He would never have imagined that the day he died would be the day when these students fell apart and the empire fell into the abyss.
One man held the emperor's secret edict and bloodbathed the harem, and was accused of being a "regicide and traitor".
One person signed a treasonous loan, came to power in a coup, and was scolded as a "treasonous minister."
The brothers who swore to "relieve the national crisis together" by the Haihe River eventually became an aloof regent and were reduced to ashes in the explosion; the other became an empty-headed consul, trapped in an isolated city with scorn.
And they were once the closest comrades:
Died on the execution ground, a "spark" ignited Shen's soul and tortured Gu's conscience.
Shen Shuai's personal soldiers have become the most dangerous "fire" after the collapse of the old world.
Some are silent and self-reliant, some are good at dancing, some disappear into the darkness, and some have broken dreams and throw themselves into the old court.
We once had a common ideal, but on the way to it, we tore each other and the empire into pieces.
History books refer to this year as "the first year of the Great Collapse".
And all the answers are hidden in the dusk when Emperor Yongchang died, and in the explosion of Old Dragon Head that shattered everything.
——The so-called twin walls of the empire, who betrayed the ideal, and who really betrayed the Ming Dynasty?
