All Are Responsible

In the spring of the seventh year of the Chongzhen reign, the once‑rampant rebel armies of Gao Yingxiang and his allies are about to face their darkest hour. Far to the northeast, Huang Taiji, the Qing ruler, runs his fingers over the Dutch cannons brought by the defector Kong Youde and plots a western campaign to annihilate the last Mongol khan, Ligdan. Within the Forbidden City, the emperor Zhu Youjian—who idealizes the sage‑kings Yao and Shun—finds himself overwhelmed by a cascading crisis: drought, mutinies, plague, and a treasury drained to the dregs. In the western reaches, the Zunghar‑led alliance of the Oirats fractures; Gushi Khan turns his gaze south toward Qinghai, while the Zunghars begin their rise to power. Under these unstoppable tides of change, the garrison soldiers at Lintao in the northwest, starved and unpaid for months, decide they have no choice but to rebel. Before they act, however, they resolve to find a scapegoat to bear the blame. Yet for Liu Jun, a man caught in the maelstrom, the stakes are far greater than a single mutiny. "A change of dynastic name is the fall of a state; but when the barbarians breach the passes, it is the fall of all under Heaven. The Ming may perish, but the realm must not." As he steels himself for what is to come, one conviction burns in his heart: "The rise and fall of the nation—every man is responsible."