In the fifteenth year of the Yongli reign, the Calamitous Incident of the Cursewater took place.
The officials of the Southern Ming were slaughtered to the last man. The Yongli Emperor, Zhu Youlang, was strangled with a bowstring by Wu Sangui at Bizi Slope in Kunming. Thus ended the Ming dynasty’s 276 years of rule.
Countless later generations of Ming-history enthusiasts lamented: If Yongli had not fled all those years, if the Southern Ming had not been consumed by endless infighting, if the loyal and worthy had not died with regrets, would the Ming really have met such an end?
When he opened his eyes again, a devoted Ming-history enthusiast with an engineering background had transmigrated into Zhu Youlang on the first month of the first year of the Yongli reign.
At that moment, he was aboard a fishing boat fleeing along the Xijiang River. He had been emperor for less than a hundred days. Guangzhou had fallen, and Li Chengdong was leading Qing forces in pursuit downriver. Just ten li away, iron cavalry was bearing down on them, bringing death in its wake.
The entire court urged him to flee west, to Guilin, Nanning, Yunnan, or Burma, retracing the path of desperate flight recorded in the history books.
No one expected this emperor, who had spent his whole life running away, to suddenly speak.
“Pass on my decree: Turn every boat around at once.”
“I, the Yongli Emperor of the Great Ming, will lead the campaign in person here on the Xijiang today and fight the Qing army to the death!”
“Anyone else who speaks of fleeing will be executed!”
