Southern Ming: Rising from a Great Shun General

In the year 1644, the Shun army breached Beijing. The Ming emperor hanged himself on Coal Hill, while the rebel king Li Zicheng seized wealth through torture and imprisoned Wu Xiang. His general Liu Zongmin abused his power and took Chen Yuanyuan, Wu Sangui’s beloved concubine, for himself. Enraged over the woman he loved, Wu Sangui defected to the Qing, opened the passes to their army, and joined them in ambushing Li Zicheng at Yipanshi…

With the Ming on the verge of collapse and the Shun still unstable, the Qing army was about to sweep across all of China.

Li Yan, a mere provincial graduate, put down his writing brush and joined the army, following the rebel king and proposing the policy of “equal land and tax exemption” in the hope of saving the people from their misery. But with the empire on the brink of ruin, years of effort came to nothing. Seeing China fall and its people suffer, he resolved to ally with the Ming against the Qing.