Chen Yuan took a photo beneath the crooked-neck tree in the Forbidden City. When he opened his eyes again, a white silk noose was around his neck.
The wind howled on Coal Hill. Flames blazed across Beijing, while eunuchs knelt on the ground, sobbing in anguish.
He had become the Chongzhen Emperor.
History said the Son of Heaven would die for his kingdom tonight.
But he refused.
From Coal Hill to Nanjing, from a powerless figurehead to an emperor with real authority.
He used modern management principles to uncover hidden farmland in Jiangnan, exploited his information advantage to deal with rebel generals ahead of time, and took food from the gentry’s mouths with the policy of “officials and gentry alike must pay grain taxes.”
The ministers realized that this emperor had changed. He no longer suspected his generals or hid away in the palace. He climbed the city walls himself to direct the fighting.
When he said, “I will not leave,” his voice trembled, but he didn’t take a single step back.
By the time the Qing army marched south, the imperial edict for the northern expedition had spread across the land, and fresh shoots had sprouted once more from the old locust tree with its crooked trunk.
The transmigrator who had once been so frightened his legs turned to jelly was gone.
In his place stood a true Son of Heaven of the Great Ming.
I am the Great Ming.
The sun, moon, mountains, and rivers have never been severed.
