After transmigrating into the body of Zhu Gaoxu, Prince of Han and the Yongle Emperor’s second son, Zhu Zhanhe is born as his legitimate eldest son, and he has it rough.
If he couldn’t become the Xuande Emperor, Zhu Zhanji, couldn’t he at least have been Zhu Zhanyong or Zhu Zhanshan?
But what’s done is done, and Zhu Zhanhe can’t change it.
He wants to flee to Yunnan and take up his fief, but the Yongle Emperor made the rules of the game, and he alone has the final say in how they’re interpreted.
He tries to do a good deed, only to somehow become the one who earns the greatest credit for wiping out Japanese pirates.
He joins an expedition to the steppe, only to somehow lead his men in building a mound of skulls.
He tries to manage his fief well, only to earn top honors for slash-and-burn farming.
He wants to go mine some gold and silver on the Japanese islands, but ends up massacring a city and taking a million Japanese captives as slaves along the way?
From then on, Zhu Zhanhe goes further and further down the path of becoming a god of slaughter.
Years later...
Zhu Di: Good grandson, I’m old now. It’s time for you to come back and inherit the throne.
The generals: We welcome the Heir of the Prince of Han to the throne!
Zhu Zhanhe: The throne? No, no, no. Grandfather, you don’t really think I went to all that trouble to reclaim the Western Regions just for Hami melons and raisins, do you?
And besides, do you think I’d have gone on an expedition against the Ottoman and Timurid Empires if not for those magnificent horses from Western Europe?
