Autumn, the seventh year of the Apocalypse, in the Forbidden City.
When the sixteen-year-old Xin Wang Zhu Youjian was called into the palace, he knew that this might be a road with no return. In front of his brother's bedside, Wei Zhongxian's shadow has shrouded the entire Ming Dynasty - the Jin Yiwei has become the private weapon of the eunuch party, the Donglin party members are bleeding out, the Houjin cavalry in Liaodong are sharpening their swords, and the treasury can no longer even pay the officials' salaries.
But he had no choice.
He became the 16th emperor of the Ming Dynasty, with the reign name Chongzhen.
In the court, the eunuchs are testing his bottom line; outside the customs, Huang Taiji's Eight Banners soldiers are pressing hard; in the Central Plains, hungry people are turning into bandits; and there is almost no face that can be trusted around him.
The young emperor holds a rusty key - what he wants to open is not the door to imperial power, but the prison of life and death in this empire.
This is not a history that is doomed.
This is a Machiavellian road to resurgence.
From the first game of eradicating Wei Zhongxian to the life-and-death layout of the Liaodong battlefield; from the undercurrent of every decree in the court to the tug-of-war of trust and suspicion with capable ministers - Chongzhen will use the country as a chessboard and power as a sword to fight his way through the cracks between the heroes of the late Ming Dynasty and change his destiny.
The Ming Dynasty should not have died at the hands of Chongzhen.
