In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, the Ming Empire collapsed. In the Forbidden City, the seventeen-year-old emperor Zhu Youjian has been diligent in government for seventeen years, but he personally pushed the empire into the abyss. On the Loess Plateau, Shen Tieshi, a farmer from northern Shaanxi, was driven to a dead end by natural and man-made disasters. He was reduced from a farmer to a refugee, and from a refugee to an insurgent. In Suzhou Water Alley, workshop owner Lu Baichuan was exploited by the weaving bureau, and he passed on the oppression he suffered to his weavers. Three people, a chain of exploitation. The top eats the middle, the middle eats the bottom, and the bottom eats the lower. Everyone thinks they are a good person and everyone is doing evil things. This is not a story about a foolish king and the subjugation of a country, but a story about a system that cannibalizes people.
