Hair grows like chives: cut it, and it grows back. Heads are like roosters: chop them off, and they still crow!
Officials need not be feared, but the common folk must never be underestimated!
In troubled times, people are as insignificant as ants, and lives as worthless as blades of grass.
The tide of history sweeps individual fates along with it.
Those swept up by the times can only rise and fall with them.
The state of the realm was already headed for collapse. The once-mighty Ming Empire was now nearing its end.
Chen Wang, a frontier soldier, gazed up at the shattered land of China and tightened his grip on the goose-feather saber at his waist.
The eighth year of Chongzhen.
The southern provinces brought disaster. Zhongdu, Fengyang, fell, and the imperial tombs were destroyed, shaking the realm.
An imperial order demanded that the rebels be suppressed within six months. Hong Chengchou set out through Tongguan with troops from four provinces to crush them, but the roving bandits fled west and entered Shaanxi once more.
The Mongols of southern Mongolia were defeated. Ejei, son of Ligdan Khan, surrendered with the Imperial Seal of China and submitted to the Later Jin.
