From Monk to Founding Emperor

In Haozhou in the fourth year of Zhengzheng, forty days of rain soaked the banks of the Huaihe River in misery. Young Zhu Chongba, holding half a piece of moldy wheat cake in his arms, stood on the broken threshold of the Earth Temple, witnessing the troubled times where people died of hunger everywhere - the preserves of the landlord Liu De's family dripped on the bluestone, attracting ants to fight for it; the second king of the same village led the skinny old hen to pay the rent; the wild dogs in the mass graves wandered around following the rotten smell, gnawing at the unburied corpses. This is a historical novel that unfolds Zhu Yuanzhang's early years in a slow-burning style. It starts from "The Hungry Death on the Huaihe River" and avoids the fast pace of grand narratives, instead delving deeply into the texture of life at the bottom. From the humble prayer of "asking for a piece of land to bury me" in the thatched house when the father died, to the hunger hidden in the sound of the wooden fish in Huangjue Temple, to the taste of Guanyin soil mixed with blood and tears on the wandering road for alms, the novel uses details as delicate as needles to weave the picture of the survival of the people in the late Yuan Dynasty: moldy brown rice can chew sand, the gap in the broken rim of the bowl rubs the blood blisters on the palms, and the flames of the red scarf army flag reflect the confusion and stubbornness in the eyes of the young man. It is not eager to make "Zhu Yuanzhang" a symbol, but to let "Zhu Chongba" first become a speck of dust in troubled times - kneeling at the landlord's house to bury his father, wandering around carrying the Guanyin soil on his back to survive, and struggling on the edge of life and death several times to protect his relatives. In the gap between starvation and war, readers can see how a young boy went from being an orphan eating moldy cakes to being pushed by the times and forced by suffering step by step. He clenched the knife in his hand and stood up from the mud in Haozhou. The name "Chongba" was slowly stained by the wind and frost of the years, and finally became a legend like a solitary smoke in the depths of history.