The night before my godfather, a powerful factory official, was imprisoned, he called me, who had just transformed into a blood-clad secret guard, to the prison: "Our family has buried evidence of thirty thousand Donglin Party crimes. The password is..." Before he could finish his words, his throat was cut.
The next day, I took the general flag badges of Dongchang and Jinyiwei and was sent to be a bodyguard for a ninth-grade county magistrate. All the civil and military officials in the court laughed at me for being a loser and relying on a mountain. Only I knew that the three thousand hidden stakes in Dongchang and the seven secret spies of Jinyiwei were all in my shadow. And I peeled off that county magistrate's cheek with my own hands.
Three months later, at the coronation ceremony of the new emperor, the elders who were supposed to have died in the imperial edict stood unharmed at the head of the hundred officials. They all knelt down to me and said, "May you be safe, sir."
And I was holding the dragon-carved dagger against the new emperor's waist: "Your Majesty, it's time for someone else to sit in this Ming Dynasty."
