In the seventh year of the Apocalypse, the national treasury was extremely empty. The war in Liaodong, the civil uprising in Shaanxi, and the payment arrears from the Nine Borders were like three huge mountains. The newly ascended Emperor Chongzhen wanted to turn the tide, and his first assistant, Han Xu, proposed the "Zonglu Reform" - reducing the royal family members of the vassal kings in the world for national use. This proposal touched the fundamental interests of the Zhu Ming royal family, and was even counterattacked by the inner court and local interest groups.
The emperor secretly supported the reform, but did not want to bear the reputation of "treating the clan members harshly"; Qingliu wanted to use this to eunuch the party and rectify the government; the vassal king formed an alliance of interests with local bureaucrats; the frontline generals were in desperate need of food and salary but were involved in court disputes. A reform intended to "save the imperial court" mutated at every level during its implementation, eventually leading to the "King Fenyang Rebellion" in Shanxi, implicating hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians.
In this vortex, Yang Jiqing, a young censor who came to Beijing with the stigma of his father's "Liaodong defeat", Zhou Wenxiang, the magistrate who intended to implement the "one whip law" new policy, the eunuch and eunuch who walked a tightrope between imperial power and civil servants, the crown prince of the Jin Dynasty who wanted to take the opportunity to seize minerals for his family... All the forces came to the stage to compete. And a "Blood Book of All People" from the people and a "Liaodong Army Salary Case" that has been hidden for many years have completely torn apart everyone's pretense and pointed directly at the core of the empire's decay - it is not that there are no loyal ministers and good generals, but this system has long left no place for loyalty and talent.
