The Story of the Ming Dynasty - the Feather Chapter

In the fifth year of Yongle, a feather floated into Wenyuan Pavilion where the "Yongle Dadian" was compiled. The bird tamer Shen Mo came to Beijing with a secret order and presented three strange birds: Dongqing, parrot and cormorant. Since then, the "Feather Guard", a secret organization with birds as its eyes and ears, was quietly born. The carrier pigeons weave an intelligence network thousands of miles away, the falcons monitor changes at the frontier, and the parrots hide in the royal palace to learn secrets - under the big sky, a war of wings invisible to humans is unfolding. However, when Haidongqing was reduced to Taoist auspiciousness, homing pigeons ate moldy imperial grains, and parrots could only remember the word "long live", this clock-like intelligence empire was quietly decaying from within along with the Ming Dynasty. This book uses the rise and fall of the "Feather Guard" over the past century as a mirror to reflect the process of the Ming Dynasty from the prosperous age of Yongle to the decline of Wanli. This is a story about wings, ropes and the sky, and it is also a profound fable about how the system changes from a sharp weapon to a shackles.