The Dusty-Wind Bodyguard

The fifth year of the Xuande reign, 1430.

It was the second year after Emperor Xuanzong of Ming deposed his blameless empress, throwing the court and the people into an uproar.

Two years earlier, citing her childlessness and frequent illness, Xuanzong had deposed his virtuous, faultless first wife, Empress Hu Shanxiang, and forcibly installed his childhood sweetheart, Sun Ruowei, as empress. This violated ancestral law and shook the court. People across the land sympathized with the deposed empress, while resentment simmered in the hearts of the officials. The court split at once into two factions: the old ministers who supported Hu and the newly favored nobles who supported Sun. They schemed against one another amid surging undercurrents. Powerful ministers formed cliques, amassed private forces, and fought in secret. The court seemed prosperous and well-ordered, but its foundations had already begun to crumble.

Everyone believed that the greatest calamity facing the Great Ming was the change of empress and the factional strife at court.

No one knew that the true fatal threat to the dynasty was not political infighting, but Fuyuantang, an underground criminal power that had lain dormant for decades, spanning the previous dynasty and the present one.

They hid among the martial world, concealed themselves in official circles, infiltrated the imperial guards, and entrenched themselves in the provinces and counties. Using the controversy over the deposed empress to stir up turmoil across the land, they planned to exploit the Great Ming's internal strife, revive a century-old restoration plot, and overthrow the Zhu dynasty.