Late Ming: I Took My Brother's Place in the Army, Only to Have My Military Merits Stolen

In the second year of the Chongzhen reign of the Great Ming, beneath the setting sun of a dying dynasty, Chu Xuan arrived. Beyond the passes, foreign tribes were invading. Within them, peasant uprisings were raging. With the land strewn with starving corpses, the first order of business was to solve the problem of food. Once the people had eaten their fill, they asked Chu Xuan, “Teacher Chu, why aren’t you teaching the Four Books and Five Classics? What are these subjects you’re teaching?” Chu Xuan wrote ten large characters on the whiteboard with a charcoal pencil: [Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Moral Education] The man asked again, “Teacher Chu, why are you starting with children? We have plenty of educated people who understand reason.” Chu Xuan replied, “Changing a generation is too hard, so I’ve chosen to create a new one. There may not be many of them now, but one day a single spark will start a prairie fire!” He set out to teach literacy, promote simplified characters, advance science and technology, encourage artisans to innovate, and arm the military with new ideas. Chen Yuanyuan, Qin Liangyu, Fang Yizhi... With Chu Xuan’s arrival, countless lives took a different course. As the long night of chaos fell, Chu Xuan led his Sichuan Army out of Sichuan and marched north! When the news got out, Huang Taiji, Dorgon, Zhang Xianzhong, Li Zicheng... all felt a chill run down their spines. Emperor Chongzhen read the secret report from the Embroidered Uniform Guard and fell into deep thought.