Chongzhen: Two Years Until the Later Jin Reach the Capital

Chen Yue, a modern-day office worker, suddenly awakens in the first year of the Chongzhen reign, having become Zhu Youjian. The nightmare of hanging himself at Coal Hill still haunts him, and the cold countdown to his death has already begun: Two years from now, the Jisi Incident will erupt. Later Jin cavalry will take a detour through Mongolia and bear down on Beijing. Seventeen years from now, Li Zicheng will capture the capital, and he will hang alone from a crooked locust tree on Coal Hill. At court, the Donglin faction pays lip service to benevolence and righteousness while monopolizing tax revenues and shielding Jiangnan gentry families as they conceal farmland and hoard grain. In the capital, the nobility entrenched in the Beijing garrison draws pay for nonexistent soldiers and skims military provisions. Some even smuggle iron goods beyond the passes to aid the enemy. Beyond the passes, Hong Taiji is consolidating his tribes and eyeing the Central Plains. In the northwest, years of drought have left refugees everywhere, while the embers of rebellion quietly take root. Everyone, at court and across the realm, believes the Ming is doomed and the fall of the dynasty cannot be averted. At this desperate moment, the [Imperial Sign-In System] activates! Silver, blueprints for an improved flintlock, high-yield potato seeds, and a manual for training a new army arrive one after another. Chen Yue refuses to repeat the original owner's fate. He confronts the Donglin faction at court, audits Jiangnan's farmland, and cuts off the gentry's foundations for tax evasion. He ruthlessly purges the parasites in the Beijing garrison, selects honest soldiers to form a new firearms army, and takes military power into his own hands. He promotes high-yield crops to pacify refugees and builds bastion forts along the frontier to guard against a Later Jin invasion. He lays a spy network and secretly gathers evidence of treasonous collusion against the nobles and rebel generals, waiting for the right moment to round them all up. Two years pass in the blink of an eye, and the powerful enemy beyond the passes is sharpening its blades. In this life, he will hold the capital at all costs, purge the parasites within and beyond the court, repel the cavalry from beyond the passes, break the deadlock at Coal Hill once and for all, and rebuild the Ming realm!