In the ninth year of Hongwu, Zhu Fan, the king of the Jin Dynasty who guarded Taiyuan and defeated the Northern Yuan Dynasty, returned to Beijing after three years. There was a deep estrangement between him and his father, Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, and he bluntly spoke out in public about his shortcomings in governing the country, exposing the chaos in the court that involved frivolous corvee and low taxes that made it difficult to help the poor. Deeply loved by the emperor and empress, and supported by his brothers, he stepped into the court and determined to rewrite the fate of the Ming Dynasty.
