The Sixth Year of Wanli: Saving the Empire from Collapse

If, after Zhang Juzheng's death, the Wanli reforms that cleansed the world of corruption had continued, and even gone deeper by tempering away the dross to refine what was pure and bring peace to the realm, would the Jia Shen upheaval still have occurred? In the fifth month of the sixth year of Wanli, Zhang Juzheng left the capital to bury his father. The Great Ming's New Policies suddenly hung in limbo, while undercurrents surged throughout the court and the realm. Li Li, a low-ranking clerk of the Ministry of Revenue, is swept into the political struggles of the court after conducting a survey of the estates belonging to the imperial relatives. Imprisoned in the Imperial Prison, he falls into a deadly trap. Confess under torture and implicate others, stabbing his superior in the back, and he cannot escape the purge of Zhang's faction; Hold out to the end, endure brutal torture, and he will be dead in prison within three to five days; Li Li knows all too well that if he dies today, Zhang Juzheng will certainly die four years later, and sixty-six years after that, the Great Ming will surely perish. Li Li can only enter the game himself, treading carefully between Zhang Juzheng, Feng Bao, the Wanli Emperor, and the scholar-officials who are so full of talk about benevolence and righteousness. He must save himself, save the New Policies, and save the faltering fortune of the Great Ming. Until he shifts the gears of history and sees clearly that no one in the imperial court is willing to bow their head for the people, he finally comes to understand: by entering the game himself, he can defeat Heaven by half a move, but what he seeks is far more than the Great Ming.