Border Troops of the Crumbling Ming

In the seventh year of the Chongzhen reign, the year of Jiaxu, the Great Ming dynasty has reached its final days. A Little Ice Age cold wave sweeps across the land, while the northwest suffers three years of drought and total crop failure. The court imposes additional levies for the Three Military Funds, and its tyranny is fiercer than a tiger. Powerful gentry seize the land, military households are scattered, and millions of refugees wander homeless. Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong raise bands of rebels, setting fires across the Central Plains. The Eight Banners cavalry of Later Jin advances on Xuanda, border cities fall one after another, and the danger of China’s collapse is just around the corner.

Liu Hui, a modern graduate student of history, dies among his books and transmigrates into this world as a low-ranking military household boy named Liu Shisan, deep in the Wumeng Mountains of northern Shaanxi. His home is bare, his mother is dead, and his father has left. Naked and starving, freezing in the hell on earth where corpses litter the land and people eat one another, he faces the brink of life and death with nothing but a short stick.

He has no System, no golden finger, and no divine weapons. All he has is a modern understanding of history, a meticulous mind, and the iron will of a reconnaissance soldier. He refuses to become a bandit and vows to protect the innocent. In dire straits, he gathers refugees, resists corrupt gentry, and seizes grain to survive. Choosing the dangerous terrain of Huanglong, he builds a stockade and lays his foundations, combining farming with military training: farmers in peacetime, soldiers in war. He opens up wasteland, trains troops, recruits craftsmen, establishes charity granaries, and takes in orphans and abandoned children.

He establishes a spy network and monitors the enemy, purges the eunuch faction’s henchmen, and uncovers conclusive evidence that Shanxi merchants are colluding with the enemy. He takes on government troops and breaks sieges, winning against stronger forces and making the Army of Pacification a name to fear. He allies with the gentry and opens trade routes, stabilizing the economy and winning the people’s trust, turning a barren mountain into a mighty fortress in an age of chaos.

From struggling to survive as an outlaw to building an army and making his name, from defending the land and protecting the people to contending for dominion over the realm.