Chongzhen Has Three Days Left Before He Hangs Himself, and All I Can Do Is Read People

He spent eight years tightening screws on an assembly line, then dropped dead at his station.

When he opened his eyes again, a gazette lay spread across the table, dated the sixteenth day of the third month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen.

Three days later, Li Zicheng would breach Beijing. Seven days later, the Chongzhen Emperor would hang himself on Coal Hill.

And his new identity was Zheng Sen, Zheng Zhilong’s son, a Fujianese provincial graduate in the capital to sit the metropolitan examination.

He couldn’t fight, couldn’t lead an army, couldn’t make firearms, and couldn’t even recite the Four Books and Five Classics from memory. In his previous life at the factory, the only skill he’d picked up was spotting who was reliable, who was slacking off, and who was trouble at a glance.

Now he had to use that one skill to carve out a way to survive in the bloodbath awaiting him three days from now.

First, save the Chongzhen Emperor. Then, save the Ming.

From a gambler at the end of the world to a judge of character and strategist, from a tragic commander to an iron-fisted emperor.

The historical knowledge in his head was slowly becoming useless. The butterfly effect turned his foresight into an outdated map. He had no golden finger, no right answers. All he could do was rely on his eyes, his wits, and the hands that had once tightened screws, to bring scattered hearts back together, one by one.

He saved the Chongzhen Emperor, then deceived him for more than a decade.

He introduced maritime banknotes, confiscated the imperial merchants’ assets, and launched three northern campaigns, fighting his way from outside Beijing all the way back to the Forbidden City.

At the foot of Coal Hill, he said, “Your Majesty, I have come.” Then, when Desheng Gate fell, he cried, “Your Majesty the Chongzhen Emperor, we’re back.”

But in the end, he was still just an assembly-line worker.

He couldn’t understand his own son, couldn’t protect his best friend, and never reconciled with his father while he was alive. As he lay dying, one by one, everyone he knew was gone.

In this life, he tightened screws for eight years and ruled as emperor for more than thirty.

The eight characters on his tombstone were his own choice:

“Know and employ the worthy; reclaim our rivers and mountains.”