Slanting Sun and Wild Wind

In the seventh year of the Tianqi era, in Daming Prefecture. Twelve-year-old Chen Jiusi crouched behind the stove, mixing Guanyin clay with elm bark powder. He kneaded it into balls, steamed them, and forced them down one bite at a time. He had no idea that three hundred miles away, in Beijing, a young emperor two years his senior had just taken the throne. Full of ambition, the emperor was changing the era name to Chongzhen. Later, Chen acquired a nickname: Donkey Dung Ball. Later still, during the Jisi Incident, Lu Xiangsheng recruited soldiers in Daming Prefecture. For the sake of a full meal, Chen Jiusi threw away his begging bowl and joined the army. A courier set out on a road that would run through the final fifteen years of the Great Ming. He carried messages to the imperial court, where he saw Chongzhen's vermilion edicts, Yang Sichang's secret letters, and the arguments between those who wanted peace and those who wanted war. He carried messages to the frontier, where he saw Lu Xiangsheng's exhaustion, Cao Bianjiao's silence, and the operas that played all night in Gao Qiqian's camp. He carried messages among the people, where he saw mountains of rice in Jiangnan, corpses of the starving in the northwest, and a great banner bearing the character "Chuang" among the ranks of refugees. He changed nothing. He only witnessed it all. Then, one letter at a time, he delivered what he had seen to where it needed to go. Until the night before the battle at Jia Village in Julu, when Lu Xiangsheng ordered him to carry out a plea for reinforcements.