Power Behind the Throne in the Great Ming: My Uncle Is Hai Rui

My name is Hai Xing. I passed the county-level imperial examination at twelve and know a little about swords and bows. At fifteen, I went to stay with my uncle, the Beijing official Hai Rui, also known as Hai Gangfeng. Who would have thought that by day I’d have to pore over the Great Ming Code and help my uncle write a memorial denouncing the Jiajing Emperor, while at night I’d carry a matchlock and persuade people with virtue? It was during all those days and nights that I discovered Elder Xu had a gentry mutual-aid society, Zhang Taiyue visited an island belonging to the Ming Dynasty’s very own Epstein, and even the death of the Longqing Emperor concealed a secret. So I told little Wanli, who was on the verge of going mad from all the psychological manipulation: Oda Nobunaga has taken the stage in Japan, and Spanish treasure ships are sailing across the Pacific. If you want to spend the rest of your life in a villa on the scenic island of Saint Helena, you’ll have to make me Grand Secretary. Oh, and one more thing. In the meantime, in the forty-fourth year of Jiajing, I inherited a fortune of a million from the remnants of Yan Song’s faction; in the second year of Longqing, I passed all three levels of the imperial examinations with top honors; in the first year of Wanli, my uncle found new love in his old age and had a son; later, I made up the Qi family army’s overdue pay and warned Li Chengliang not to take on adopted sons… But those are all minor matters. Compared with me and the ever-prosperous Ming Dynasty, they’re not worth mentioning.