The Death of the Heavenly Father

The year is 1856, the third year since the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom established its capital at Tianjing.

Chen Nianzu, a history PhD, transmigrates into the body of an ordinary guard in the Heavenly King’s mansion. He knows everything about the Tianjing Incident: Yang Xiuqing demands the title of Lord of Ten Thousand Years, Hong Xiuquan secretly orders Yang’s execution, and Wei Changhui massacres the Eastern King’s residence, leaving twenty thousand Taiping soldiers dead. In just five months, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom will plunge from the peak of its military power into the depths of internecine strife.

He has seen Yang Xiuqing invoke “Heavenly Father descending to earth” to berate the Heavenly King in court. He has seen Wei Changhui silently clench his fists in a corner. He has seen Shi Dakai caught between loyalty and suspicion, unable to make a move. He knows how it will end, yet he can change nothing. In this game of power, he has never been a player, only a pawn pushed along by history.

The only thing he can do is record it all in a little booklet bound from scraps of paper:

The Heavenly King’s secret edict, the blood of the Eastern King, the Northern King’s butcher’s blade, the Wing King’s departure.

And the final five months of a heavenly kingdom destined to fall.

When the night of blood descends on Tianjing, when brothers turn against one another, when an era is reduced to ashes by power and suspicion

he closes the bloodstained booklet and writes a title on its first page: The Death of the Heavenly Father.