Great Ming: The Rules of Peach Blossom Spring

The day Lin Ye died, his debts stood at 2.17 million. All he had in his fist was a peach pit, left by his mother and the only thing his creditors hadn’t taken. When he opened his eyes again, he was lying in a river in the Ming dynasty. The one who hauled him out was a girl so starved she was little more than skin and bones. The peach pit sprouted in his palm. It gave him no food, no weapon, and cared about only one thing: rules. Every rule he established made a peach tree grow within his territory. The first rule he set was this: no selling people, not a single one. So he led a group of people on the brink of starvation into the mountains, where they built dams, opened fields, and established a public council, creating a place that levied no taxes, bowed to no officials, and sold no people. But wherever his rules took hold, trouble followed: brokers, bandits, salt smugglers, and the authorities, each more formidable than the last. Every new rule brought someone who wanted to smash it. Only later did he learn that this peach pit was a seed left behind by an earlier Peach Blossom utopia. And that utopia had fallen not because of the authorities, but because someone had broken the rules. “I’m no rebel,” Lin Ye explained to the blade. “I’m just a man who sets rules.” No one believed him.