What is a good person? What is a bad guy? Have you ever seen a corrupt official become a martyr? A traitor turned into a loyal minister? A group of traitors turned into righteous men? The real history is so strange! This book takes the real major historical events of the Ming and Qing Dynasties as the main line. Through the portrayal and description of historical figures Zhu Dadian, Ma Shiying, Jin Shenghuan, Wang Deren, Li Chengdong and others, this book profoundly reveals the duality and complexity of good and evil in human nature based on real historical data. There is a theme throughout the book: good and evil deeds are in oneself, and the name of good and evil is in people. Human nature is complex and changeable, and the only thing that cannot be changed is the towering green mountains.
The novel begins with a dream that Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, had before he ascended the throne. In his dream, Zhu Yuanzhang received an old monk's words: Everything is always empty in the end, and good and evil are different. Then Zhu Yuanzhang got another poem on the day he ascended the throne: If there are more than ten grandfathers and grandsons sitting in the court, it is auspicious to be less than three hundred. When the sun and the moon set and the breeze rises, how can a country last forever? Therefore, the novel unfolds around these two poems and unfolds a picture of more than two hundred years later: historical figures appear one after another, fighting and fighting, bloodshed, and the good and evil of human nature are fully exposed.
The book ends at Chapter 110, leaving people with endless thoughts and sighs:
"The black and flying rabbits are flying in the sky, and the world has been through the ages. I am pondering how many talents are right and wrong, success or failure."
Wealthy singing houses and dancing pavilions, desolate abandoned tombs and deserted terraces. All things look back and turn into dust, but only the green mountains remain unchanged. "[