The Ming Dynasty Escort’s Fight Against Fate

In the seventeenth year of the Chongzhen reign, Li Zicheng proclaimed himself emperor in Xi'an, and the Great Shun army swept across the north. The Ming dynasty teetered on the brink of collapse. The court urgently requisitioned one hundred thousand jin of government-cast iron ingots from Phoenix Mountain to be shipped north and forged into weapons to defend the borders. Yet the iron mysteriously vanished at Yanziji Wharf in Nanjing. Corrupt officials and merchants colluded to keep the matter quiet. The authorities deliberately buried the case, the Jiangyou merchant guild secretly rerouted the shipment, and treacherous courtiers sold the finest iron to the enemy, intending to aid the invaders and betray the country. On a dark night in Shangyuan, the blood-soaked commissioner of the ironworks staggered into the Yunxiang Escort Agency, fighting to stay alive long enough to entrust them with a shocking secret. Zhang Yunyan, the agency's female head, had wanted nothing more than a quiet life in the martial world, far from court intrigues. But those one hundred thousand ingots of iron, lost at Yanziji and tied to the fate of the realm, made her set out without hesitation. With her quick-witted junior apprentice Zhou Shuo and the fierce hero Wang Chong, she pursued the shipment for three thousand li. Traveling upriver from Nanjing, she broke into the Jiangyou Merchants' Guild, investigated the mystery in Hangzhou, and uncovered the court's secret about a faked death. She witnessed the upheaval when Chongzhen hanged himself and the ensuing factional strife and civil unrest in the Southern Ming. She raced a thousand li to intercept iron pots being sent to the enemy at Zhangjiakou, and lived through the Ten Days of Yangzhou and the fall of Jinling. As the great edifice crumbled, high officials clung to their own safety. In a world tossed by chaos, ordinary people were as helpless as ants. Yet one woman, an escort warrior, made chivalry her blade and solitary courage her path. She pursued the shipment for a thousand li, remaining true to her homeland and to the convictions she had never abandoned. The iron vanished at Yanziji; the winds rose at Longjiang Pass. Though the realm may fall, Huaxia will endure forever.