History graduate student Lin Zhao wakes up to find himself inhabiting the body of Zhu Youjian, the late Ming emperor who is about to hang himself.
With Beijing on the verge of falling, Lin Zhao has a death-row prisoner hang in his place on Coal Hill. Disguised as a beggar in ragged clothes and carrying a bucket of night soil, he joins the tide of refugees with the old eunuch Wang Cheng'en and flees west.
From Coal Hill to Shu Mountain, from a ruler with no one at his side to the leader of the White Pole Army, from a refugee chief to the last backbone of the Ming dynasty. I will start over, but this time, I will not only claim the realm, I will remake it.
