Chongzhen: The Final Fifteen Years

In the seventh year of the Tianqi reign, Zhu Youjian took over a tottering Great Ming before his elder brother’s spirit tablet. He was one of the most diligent emperors in history, attending the morning court without fail for seventeen years, yet he could only watch as the empire crumbled in his hands. A locust tree on Coal Hill was his final resting place.

But this time, fate gave him a second chance.

On the night of the eighteenth day of the third month in the seventeenth year of the Chongzhen reign, Beijing was on the verge of falling. Zhu Youjian raised his sword to kill his wife and daughters, but at the very instant the blade came down, he returned to fifteen years earlier, to the night he had just ascended the throne.

With memories of the next fifteen years in his hands, he knows exactly what will happen: Yuan Chonghuan will be executed by the slow slicing method, Hong Chengchou will surrender to the Qing, Sun Chuanting will die in battle, and he himself will drive Li Zicheng into rebellion.

This time, he will rewrite everyone’s fate.

But when he begins to act, he discovers that the world seems subtly different from the history he remembers…