The Later Qi

In the autumn of the fourth year of Yuanhe, outside Yunjin City, a hundred thousand Tatar troops vanished into thin air amid a flash of blinding light that lasted the time it takes an incense stick to burn.

The commander had died for his country, supplies had run out, and the isolated city teetered on the brink of disaster.

Lu Chengyan, a twenty-five-year-old maritime merchant, slipped into the city along a smuggler's trail, bringing thirty carts of grain and three thousand taels of silver.

He had no wish to die. He only wanted to survive in this city.

Facing corrupt generals, powerful families, and the northern warlords, he made an example of them in public, seized the grain shops, forced rents down, and recruited hardened bandits.

To defend the city with official legitimacy, he had no choice but to negotiate with the powerful minister at court, securing a document appointing him as a pacification commissioner.

He had no golden finger, only the keen eye honed by maritime trade and a mind that could calculate everything under heaven.

He could keep perfect accounts of grain and read people's hearts, but he couldn't figure out why one person would rather die.