Li Zicheng stood atop the city wall, gazing at the frozen earth beyond the pass, trampled to ruin by horses’ hooves. In his hand, he clutched a rusted iron arrowhead.
Three hundred years ago, his ancestors fled in defeat from here to Jiugong Mountain. From then on, the words “Prince of Rebels” became a sigh in the history books.
Three hundred years later, a modern soul from an old family home in Mizhi stood here again, carrying the words from his family tree: “When the descendants inherit the legacy, they must go and save it.” But what he had come to save was never just one person, one family, or one surname.
He knew where the dynasty’s fatal weakness lay. It wasn’t that the rebels were too strong, or that there were too many natural disasters. It was the princely clansmen drinking atop their granaries, driving every decent commoner to become a rebel with their own hands.
His aim was not merely to change dynasties, but to turn that “so close” ending from three hundred years ago into “this time, things will be different.”
From the extinguished desk lamp in the old family home in Mizhi to the bloodstained rebel banner atop Shanhai Pass.
“Welcome the Prince of Rebels! The Prince of Rebels has come, and he won’t collect grain.”
This time, he would keep his word.
