On the eve of the Southern Ming dynasty's fall in 1661, Su Yuan, a history PhD student, transmigrates into the body of Zhu Cixuan, the fifteen-year-old crown prince and son of the Yongli Emperor. He knows the disaster at the Salween River is coming, but, powerless and imprisoned, he can only watch history repeat itself. From a cell in Ava to a breakout at Salween Harbor, he leads the remnants of his forces in seizing ships and escaping by sea. Starting from nothing in Burma's Mergui Archipelago, he builds up agriculture and technology, establishes a navy, and uses sea power to challenge land power. He marries a Burmese princess, joins forces with the Ming loyalist Zheng navy, and gathers the armies of the Three Feudatories. Step by step, he counterattacks into Yunnan, takes the Central Plains, and ultimately overthrows the Qing dynasty. When the dragon banner flies once more over Nanjing, a blue empire spanning the Pacific and Indian Oceans has quietly risen. This is not only the comeback epic of a crown prince whose country was lost, but also the grand transformation of a civilization turning from the yellow earth toward the sea.
