On the sixth day of the third month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, the emperor fell asleep in the Qianqing Palace.
When he woke, he was in a stranger’s body, with a glowing screen standing before him. One line was written on it: “On the nineteenth day of the third month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, the emperor will hang himself at Coal Hill.”
That was thirteen days away.
From that night on, every time he fell asleep, he would switch bodies with a man named Chen Mo, three hundred and eighty years in the future. Chen Mo could look up how the Ming Dynasty had fallen: which pass would be lost and on what day, which minister would open the city gates, whose house held the money.
But history books recorded the outcomes, not the reasons.
The general remembered as a traitor was the only one who rushed to save the emperor. The censor who shouted about loyalty to the throne in court every day was the first to welcome the Prince of Shun when the city fell.
Thirteen days. An empty city, fifty thousand exhausted troops, and an utterly empty treasury.
He didn’t want to go back to Coal Hill.
Come on!!! 😉