In the thirteenth year of Chongzhen, the empire stands on the brink of collapse.
A 36-year-old middle manager at an internet company drops dead after working late into the night. When he opens his eyes, he's become the lowliest night watchman in a county town: living in a ruined temple, eating leftovers, and saddled with fifty taels of gambling debt. At any moment, a wealthy merchant's thugs could beat him to death in an alley. He has no System, no golden finger, and no one who knows him. All he has are eyes sharpened by twenty years in the corporate world and knowledge of the history that is about to unfold.
His name is Zhang Liugeng. A night watchman. He knows Beijing will fall in 1644, that the Southern Ming will descend into chaos, and that the Qing army will triumph. But he knows one thing even better: knowing the ending doesn't mean you'll survive the night. Starting with a gambling debt, he learns to read everyone's interests from his lowly post in the county office. He learns how to play both sides between a smiling tiger and a Shaoxing secretary. He learns to trade information for protection and secrets for safety. He's no hero, just an utterly clear-eyed ordinary man who takes one step at a time in a world that devours people, turning himself from a pawn into a player. Yet this is a troubled age that won't spare you just because you've seen through it. Beijing falls, the Southern Ming is established, the Qing army marches south, and Zheng Chenggong takes Taiwan... Every wave of history crashes over him, and he is right there in the surf. From a clerk in the county office to the local kingpin, from an influential chancellor of the Southern Ming to a strategist behind the scenes, he spends twenty years walking a road that takes others several lifetimes to travel. He also spends twenty years learning one thing: those who gain too much power rarely meet a good end, and those who know too much inevitably become targets. Making a real exit is harder than winning any contest of wits. This is the story of a night watchman. It's also a story about how far understanding human nature can really take you.
