Chapter 1: Prologue — Four and a Half Days Left

On the night of the fourteenth day of the third month in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen of the Great Ming, there were still four and a half days before the dynasty's fall as recorded in the history books!

Above the Xiaoling Mausoleum in the auxiliary capital Nanjing, where the Great Ming's Exalted Founder Emperor lay buried — after nightfall, for some unknown reason, a long howl suddenly rang out from thin air!

At that very moment, inside the Forbidden City in Beijing, within the Duanben Palace, a startled cry suddenly broke out.

"Aiyo... Ancestor, you can't do this to me!"

Zhu Yaofei opened his eyes once more, looked around in every direction, then, as if punishing himself, fiercely pinched his own ear. What followed was a roar of fury!

The reason for his roar was that he had been swindled — thoroughly swindled! And the one who swindled him was truly formidable: his name was Zhu Yuanzhang!

That's right — that very same jade-tree-in-the-wind, brilliant and mighty, kindly-faced but ruthless-hearted, killer who never blinked, swindler who spared neither kin nor stranger — the Great Ming's Exalted Founder Emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang!

As a financial big dog from the twenty-first-century Shanghai's financial circles with a few modest achievements, a man nicknamed "Pig Can Fly," Zhu Yaofei, Director Zhu, had actually been swindled rotten by a Ming emperor who'd been dead for several hundred years. The whole thing sounded a bit absurd.

But for "Pig Can Fly" Director Zhu, who moved in financial circles, absurd things were nothing new. Those legendary tales like a listed company's "hundreds of millions of yuan worth of scallops ran away" or "billions of yuan worth of pigs starved to death" — didn't a huge pile of those break out every single year? So his capacity to endure absurd events, and his ability to analyze them, had long since been tempered.

He was, after all, a certified Level III Chartered Financial Analyst! And the sort of high-level talent who was especially good at pondering, especially good at analyzing, and especially good at bullshitting... And what's more, he was a descendant of the Great Ming's Exalted Founder Emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang!

Before being swindled rotten by his old ancestor, Director Zhu had still been quite proud of his "noble bloodline." Born into a farming family in Changsha County, Hunan Province (not Changsha City), Zhu Yaofei and his entire clan all considered themselves descendants of the Great Ming's founding emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang. The ancestral hall back in his hometown had always enshrined the spirit tablet of the Great Ming's Exalted Founder Emperor.

And from childhood, Zhu Yaofei had never been stingy about kowtowing to his old ancestor and praying for protection. If the ancestor was awesome, then of course he ought to protect his descendants and make them awesome too, right? Only when everyone's awesome together is it truly awesome.

Whether he had inherited his old ancestor's fine genes or the old ancestor really was protecting him, in any case, the things Zhu Yaofei prayed for protection about basically came true every single time. This had cultivated in him the fine habit of praying to his ancestors for protection whenever a major matter arose.

And not long ago, Zhu Yaofei had landed himself in another major matter. If he pulled it off, he'd be completely financially free; if he botched it, he might well get "monitored" by the Securities Regulatory Commission — a lifetime ban from the securities market would be the lightest outcome.

So he didn't go worship his ancestors at the hometown ancestral hall this time, but went straight to the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum in Nanjing to pay his respects!

Right there before the precious-cauldron brick wall of the Xiaoling Mausoleum, he bowed three times to his ancestor and prayed for protection, and even made a grand vow — as long as he got rich, and insofar as the state permitted, he would rebuild his ancestor's tomb.

And then he was swindled by his old ancestor — his soul swapped into another body!

Swapped into the body of a Ming-dynasty ancient who was qualified to rebuild Zhu Yuanzhang's tomb... Truly, making vows carries risk, and praying demands caution!

And just like that, everything Director Zhu Yaofei had toiled for through half his life — his parents, his friends, his wife, his children — all vanished along with it.

In their place came fifteen years of someone else's life memories, an extremely unlucky name, and a window of time that drove one to despair.

The extremely unlucky name was Zhu Cilang, and it belonged to the young body now occupied by Zhu Yaofei's soul.

As a descendant of Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Yaofei of course knew that Zhu Cilang was the eldest son of the Chongzhen Emperor, posthumously titled Crown Prince Xianmin.

And the current time seemed to be the thirteenth — or maybe the fourteenth — day of the third month in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen of the Great Ming.

If history did not change, in a short four or five days, the Great Ming dynasty, that "junk stock," was about to be delisted.

The chairman of "Great Ming Inc.," Crown Prince Zhu's father the Chongzhen Emperor, would hang himself, and Crown Prince Zhu's mother, Empress Zhou, would likewise commit suicide for the fallen state.

And Crown Prince Zhu himself, now orphaned, would become a captive of the Roving King Li Zicheng, and after the Battle of Yi Pian Shi would vanish... perhaps dying amid the chaos of battle, perhaps killed on Dorgon's orders, perhaps becoming a monk somewhere in Guangdong.

In short, none of them were good endings!

"So I'm just Zhu Cilang now? How is that possible..." Zhu Yaofei drew a deep breath and muttered to himself, "But it's definitely not a dream. Maybe I've gone mad? If I've gone mad, that'd be terrible — I still have big deals to close! And if I haven't gone mad, then damn it all, that's even worse..."

Creak.

The door opened. Zhu Yaofei turned his head and saw a middle-aged man in a blue robe, wearing a double-arched gauze cap, with a plump, doughy face, hurrying in with quick steps.

When the man saw that Zhu Yaofei had already sat up, he immediately let out a huge sigh of relief. "Your Highness, you've finally woken! You've slept a mighty long time this round — nearly a full day and night, and no matter how we called, you wouldn't wake... His Majesty and Her Majesty were both worried, and had Physician Zeng come look at you several times. Her Majesty and Consort Zhang even came in person to check on you, and left only a short while ago.

Oh, and Thousand Years, you kept shouting 'Ancestor' the whole time — you must have dreamed of the Exalted Founder Emperor, didn't you?"

In Zhu Yaofei's memory, this "doughy face" was named Huang Dabao, nicknamed Eunuch Dabao, and he was Zhu Cilang's companion-study eunuch.

"Oh, slept a day and a night..." Only then did Zhu Yaofei notice that the lamplight in the room was dim and yellow — clearly it was already night. He suddenly started. "Today is... what day of the third month?"

"In reply to my master, today is the fourteenth of the third month."

Zhu Yaofei asked again: "The fourteenth of the third month in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen?"

"That's right, the fourteenth of the third month in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen."

"And it's already night..." Zhu Yaofei glanced at the pitch-black doorway and sucked in a cold breath. "Not counting tonight, there are only four and a half days left!"

"Four and a half days?" Huang Dabao was puzzled. "What has only four and a half days left?"

Zhu Yaofei looked at this foolish eunuch and actually found himself in the mood for a joke. He suddenly grinned: "In four and a half days, the Great Ming is going to have its listing suspended! Do you know what 'listing suspended' means?"

...

Qianqing Palace, the Eastern Warm Pavilion.

The Chongzhen Emperor, seventeen years on the throne, wore a winged-auspicious cap and a round-collared, narrow-sleeved everyday robe as he sat upon the dragon throne. Though the night was deep now, the Chongzhen Emperor had not the slightest drowsiness — nor did he dare to sleep.

Because just that afternoon, a field dispatch had arrived from Juyong Pass, saying that the vanguard of the Roving Bandit's great army had already reached the north side of Badaling!

And on the first day of the third month, the Roving Bandit's army had just taken Ningwu Pass in Daizhou. Regional Commander Zhou Yuji, defending Ningwu Pass, had held back the Roving Bandit for more than ten days with a mere three thousand garrison troops.

When the field dispatch reporting Ningwu Pass's fall had arrived, the Chongzhen Emperor had still been quite confident. After all, Ningwu Pass was still over a thousand li from Beijing, and there were still the two strategic strongholds of Datong and Xuanhua in the way. Those were two of the Nine Border Fortresses — their walls were sturdy and their garrisons numerous, far more reliable than Ningwu Pass. If the Roving Bandit had to fight through them one by one, they'd be wiped out before ever reaching the walls of Beijing.

But today was only the fourteenth of the third month — a mere thirteen days since Ningwu Pass fell — and the Roving Bandit's great army had already swept all before it, taking the two strategic strongholds of Datong and Xuanhua in succession, marching seven or eight hundred li, and arriving north of Badaling.

At this, the thirty-three-year-old Son of Heaven of the Great Ming was completely dumbfounded!

"Your Majesty, the situation is urgent. If we do not go south to the home in the Southern Capital now, I fear it will be too late for regret..." The speaker was a beautiful woman wearing a plain, unadornished sleeveless over-robe, her face fair as jade, with faint crow's feet at the corners of her eyes. Her voice was somewhat hoarse and tinged with anxiety — clearly she had been frightened out of her wits by the ferocious advance of the Roving Bandit.

This beautiful woman was none other than the Chongzhen Emperor's lawful wife, Empress Zhou, and also the birth mother of Zhu Cilang, whose body Zhu Yaofei's soul now occupied. She had spent the entire day in the Crown Prince's Duanben Palace, keeping watch over the "long-sleeping, un-waking" Zhu Cilang, listening to him babble nonsense like "Ancestor, you can't do this." Only at dusk had the Chongzhen Emperor summoned her to Qianqing Palace to attend him in bed.

Though it was called attending him in bed, in truth the mentally and physically exhausted Chongzhen Emperor needed the comfort of the wife of his youth.

Listening to his wife's words, Chongzhen sighed, feeling only a chill at the back of his neck. "This matter has been discussed many times already, but no one supported it, and so it has been delayed until now. Now that the Roving Bandit is already at Juyong, if we discuss moving the capital south again, I fear that once the troops at Juyong Pass hear word of it, they will do just as Xuanhua and Datong did."

Xuanhua and Datong had tens of thousands of crack troops and sturdy walled cities to rely on — they certainly could not have been wiped out by the Roving Bandit's great army within a dozen or so days. Yet the Roving Bandit's advance was now so astonishingly swift that there could be only one reasonable explanation.

That was that the Great Ming's officers and soldiers in the strategic strongholds of Xuanhua and Datong had all already gone over to the bandits!

Chongzhen glanced at his wife. Seeing her eyes red and swollen, he knew she had been weeping quietly. A pang of sorrow rose in his heart, and his own eyes grew moist. Not wanting to shed tears in front of his wife, he changed the subject: "Is Chunge any better?"

Chunge was the childhood name of Crown Prince Zhu Cilang. Zhu Cilang had always been in excellent health and had never fallen ill, yet today he had slept long without waking and could not be roused, which worried the Chongzhen Emperor greatly. But with the national crisis bearing down, he truly could not spare the attention, so he had instructed Empress Zhou to look after him.

"Divine Physician Zeng examined him and said Chunge has no illness." Empress Zhou said, "He simply won't wake... Perhaps, perhaps an ancestor is sending him a dream."

"An ancestor sending a dream? Nonsense!" The Chongzhen Emperor shook his head. "Since when did Divine Physician Zeng become Immortal Zeng?"

Empress Zhou sighed. "If only it truly were our old ancestor sending a dream. In this world today, only our old ancestor's help could set things right."

The Chongzhen Emperor fell silent, lost in thought about who knew what.

Just then, the door of the Eastern Warmth Pavilion was suddenly pushed open, and in walked a eunuch of about fifty, wearing a red robe and a domed hat, with an honest, kindly face. Seeing Chongzhen, he bowed and, with a trace of joy on his face, said, "Your Majesty, Li Jizhou from the Eastern Palace's Dispensary has come to report that the young master has awakened."

Hearing that her son had awakened, Empress Zhou, who had been seated, immediately rose and said to Chongzhen, "Your Majesty, this consort will go and see him."

Chongzhen asked, "What did he say? Has Divine Physician Zeng seen him?"

"In reply to Your Majesty, Qiu Zhizhong says Imperial Physician Zeng has already examined him. The young master is not seriously ill and is now taking his meal."

Chongzhen said to Empress Zhou, "Then there is no need to go. You are tired as well; rest early." Then he said to the old eunuch, "Companion Wang, go and look in on the boy. If anything happens, report at once."

(End of Chapter)