In the seventeenth year of the Jingtai era, the Great Yong Dynasty had stood for one hundred and seventy years. The treasury was empty, and the nine frontier garrisons had gone three years without pay. The gentry paid no taxes and had seized millions of mu of fertile land. Beyond the border, the northern riders sharpened their blades, while the purists at court still debated matters of the mind and nature.
The Hongze Lake dike burst, and refugees resorted to eating their own children. A fabricated accusation of collusion with bandits tore away the mask of the wealthy merchants of Huaidong. A bloodstained goose-feather saber took the head of the richest man's only son.
Pei Xingzhang, a Ministry of Works Vice Director from a humble background, stepped into Great Yong's bloody mire with an abacus in one hand and a butcher's blade in the other.
He was the “foremost treacherous minister in the realm,” reviled by every scholar: he bled the people dry, fabricated charges, purged the Censorate, and drove the great scholars who preached benevolent rule from court.
He was also Great Yong's greatest minister in a century: he surveyed and redistributed land, reformed the capital's army, pacified the Huai River, and delivered every ounce of grain and pay to the soldiers on the nine frontiers.
He cared nothing for public opinion, nor for the verdict history would pass on him after death. He could calculate every coin and grain in the realm, every twist of power and turn of life or death. The only thing he had ever calculated for himself was a cheap, thin-walled coffin.
Until the cavalry beyond the border encircled the capital, and the purists at court scrambled to surrender and flee south.
This vicious dog, despised by all under Heaven, donned his crimson robe, raised his sword, and climbed the city wall. He cut off an envoy's ear and beheaded the high official who had urged surrender. Before the crumbling walls, he laughed wildly at the heavens:
“I, Pei Xingzhang, lived as this dynasty's treacherous minister, and I'll die as its vengeful ghost. You stinking barbarians beyond the border think you can make the men of Han kneel?!”
