“Will His Majesty attend court today?”
“Let us wait a little longer. Eunuch Wang has yet to come out with word.”
“Some time ago, Huang Taiji led the Jian slaves around through Mongolia, their spearheads pressing straight to the walls of Beijing… With calamity of such magnitude upon us, His Majesty still has not taken so much as half a step out of Yongshou Palace.”
“Alas, ever since Wei Zhongxian was eliminated, His Majesty has seemed like a different man.”
“Censor Zhou, mind your words!”
The Forbidden City, outside Yongshou Palace.
Dozens of high-ranking court officials in crimson and blue robes gathered in clusters of twos and threes, whispering in the cold winter wind.
Unease was written across every face.
At last, the palace gate opened a crack.
Wang Cheng’en, the brush-holding eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial and superintendent of the Eastern Depot, bent at the waist and shuffled out from within.
He turned around to face the gathered ministers, who were all craning their necks in expectation, and piled his usual, slightly humble smile onto his face.
“My lords, His Majesty has an oral decree.”
Everyone immediately held their breath and bowed.
“We have gained an understanding in Our heart. All affairs of the court shall continue to be handled by the Grand Secretariat and the officials of the various ministries according to law.”
The moment his words fell, the crowd erupted.
“He is not attending court again?”
“This… how many times has it been?”
“How many times? An entire year!”
“The affairs of state are in dire straits. How can His Majesty abandon his ministers and people…”
Han Kuang, a Grand Secretary with hair and beard both white, stepped forward and cupped his hands toward Wang Cheng’en.
“Eunuch Wang, it is not that we fail to understand reason and insist on disturbing His Majesty’s quiet cultivation. It is truly that the great affairs of the military and the state have reached a point where only His Majesty’s sagacious judgment can decide them! We ask that you convey our words once more. This old minister, Han Kuang, leads the hundred officials here in earnestly beseeching His Majesty to attend court!”
Wen Tiren and another mainstay of the Donglin faction, Grand Secretary Qian Longxi, also chimed in one after another.
“On many matters, this minister truly finds it difficult to decide alone.”
“If we cannot see His Majesty today, then we shall kneel here and not rise!”
Many officials behind them echoed their words, putting on the posture of remonstrating with their lives.
Wang Cheng’en’s face was full of helplessness as he bowed again and again.
“My lords, you are—sigh, this servant will go speak once more. This servant cannot make the decision…”
He turned again and pushed open the door, shutting out the anxious and indignant gazes of the hundred officials.
Deep within the great hall, curtains hung low.
Though it was the dead of winter, not even a single charcoal brazier had been lit inside Yongshou Palace, making Wang Cheng’en puff out white breaths.
Only a few slanting beams of light fell from the high windows, illuminating a young figure dressed in a plain Daoist robe.
His frame was thin. Half-concealed behind the curtains, one could vaguely make out his clear, handsome contours and tightly pressed lips.
It was the Son of Heaven of the present day, the Chongzhen Emperor—
Zhu Youjian.
Wang Cheng’en hurried forward and dropped to his knees when he was still about a zhang away from that figure.
“Imperial Lord, this slave has returned. The Elder Grand Secretaries refuse to leave. They say the Jian slaves have surrounded the capital, that the matter concerns the very heavens, and that the Grand Secretariat cannot bear such responsibility. They insist on begging Imperial Lord to go out and take charge of the situation…”
His voice took on a sobbing tone.
Partly from the cold, and partly because he was truly afraid.
The Chongzhen Emperor on the prayer mat slowly opened his eyes.
Black and profound, like an ancient well or a cold pool.
There was not the slightest sign of the impatience, panic, or anger that a young Son of Heaven ought to have had. There was only an almost indifferent calm.
“We heard it.”
Wang Cheng’en shuddered violently and subconsciously raised his head.
He was an old servant from Prince Xin’s estate, the close attendant who had served Zhu Youjian personally since he was still Prince Xin.
He had watched this master go from a feudal prince to the emperor who held all under heaven in his hands. No one understood the former His Majesty better than he did—
Sensitive, suspicious, impatient, yearning to establish achievements and make a name for himself, yet often powerless to do so.
But from the beginning of the year, His Majesty had seemed, overnight…
Like a different man.
First, without any warning, he had tossed all matters of court administration entirely to the Grand Secretariat.
Then he had moved into Yongshou Palace, devoting himself wholeheartedly to Daoist cultivation and ignoring outside affairs.
Yongshou Palace!
This was the very place where the Jiajing Emperor, the Shizong Emperor, had moved after the Renyin Palace Incident, cultivating the Dao there, and ultimately dying there.
When His Majesty chose this place, the court officials had at first been terrified, thinking the new sovereign wanted to imitate Old Ancestor Jiajing and put on a show of “ruling with folded hands” while controlling all his ministers.
During that period, one could say the entire court had been in a state of panic.
But very soon, everyone discovered that it was not that at all.
His Majesty truly had washed his hands of everything!
He did not read memorials, did not attend court assemblies, and could not even be bothered to ask about the most crucial appointments of officials and military deployments. He had completely become a hands-off shopkeeper.
The civil official bloc led by the Donglin Party could finally spread its wings and realize its political ideal of having the court filled with upright men.
Yet the good times did not last long.
Donglin elder Han Kuang and the other officials soon discovered:
There were certain major decisions concerning the foundations of the state, the pure judgment of the scholar-official class, and one’s posthumous reputation—
In short, “black pots.”
They absolutely did not dare to, nor did they wish to, shoulder them alone.
For example, in the tenth month of this year, Huang Taiji, the Great Khan of the Later Jin, personally led a great army around through Mongolia and broke through the passes at multiple points, including Da’an Pass, Longjing Pass, and Xifengkou.
A humiliation of the deepest degree, a calamity that seemed to bring the heavens crashing down, meant that someone had to bear responsibility.
Who would bear it?
Naturally, Yuan Chonghuan, the field commander at the front who had boasted that he would “recover Liao in five years.”
And the court ministers who had recommended and supported Yuan Chonghuan back then. First and foremost among them was Qian Longxi!
Thus, today, they had to force the emperor to come out. They had to make the emperor “decide alone by his sacred will” and settle where this guilt lay.
Although Wang Cheng’en did not fully understand all the intricacies involved, his concern for the Chongzhen Emperor was utterly genuine.
He shuffled forward on his knees by two steps and said with a sob in his voice,
“My good Imperial Lord, please go and take a look! This realm cannot be without you to preside over the situation!”
As he spoke, he was about to knock his head against the ground.
Yet before his waist could bend, he suddenly felt a gentle yet irresistible force support him out of thin air.
Not only did it stop him from kowtowing, it even lifted his prostrate body upright.
“?!”
Wang Cheng’en stiffened abruptly, every sob and plea lodging in his throat.
He raised his head in astonishment and looked toward the figure on the prayer mat.
What was that just now?
A gust of wind?
But the palace doors were tightly shut. Where would wind have come from?
“Let them all come in.”
The Chongzhen Emperor’s voice sounded again, still unruffled.
“…Ah? Ah!”
Wang Cheng’en’s mind went blank, and he almost suspected he had misheard.
Only when he met those deep, dark eyes did he abruptly come back to himself, stammering in reply,
“This slave will go convey the decree at once!”
Wang Cheng’en walked out in a daze. Because he was too shocked and flustered, he nearly tripped when stepping over the threshold.
He steadied himself against the doorframe and unconsciously muttered to himself,
“Where did that strange wind come from? No, no, that was an illusion. This servant must be frozen senseless. An illusion…”
Yongshou Palace returned to silence.
Behind the white curtains, the “Chongzhen Emperor” slowly raised his right hand, palm upward.
A faint yet incomparably pure, bright-yellow spiritual light quietly emerged in his palm.
Like a tiny, flickering flame, it drove away a small patch of darkness around him and illuminated his calm, undisturbed eyes.
“After a full year, I have finally stepped into the realm of Embryonic Breathing.”
He was no longer the original Chongzhen Emperor, Zhu Youjian.
He was Zhu Youjian.
A transmigrator who had lived through two lifetimes.
At first, he had been an ordinary person of the twenty-first century.
After being sent flying by a dump truck, his soul had inexplicably gone to a boundless world of cultivation where immortals and demons stood side by side.
He had endured hundreds of years of hardships and tribulations, struggling all the way to survive, painstakingly cultivating until he was only half a step from the Golden Core. Yet before he could prove his Dao, his master and his senior brothers and sisters had all attempted to seize his body at the same time.
Five peak Purple Mansion cultivators fought beneath the lightning tribulation, ultimately causing the fleshly body to collapse…
Fortunately, Zhu Youjian’s true spirit did not perish, and he once again traversed endless time and space.
At the beginning of the second year of Chongzhen—fifteen years before the fall of the Ming dynasty—he awakened in Zhu Youjian’s body.
“A land without spirit…”
The higher form of energy was spiritual qi. A field like Earth, where energy was sparse and insufficient to naturally form “spiritual impetus,” could be called a land without spirit.
From being a peak Purple Mansion Perfected Man, accustomed to moving mountains and overturning seas, he had suddenly fallen into the mortal dust.
The enormous gap made Zhu Youjian uneasy.
Governing the country?
Pacifying all under heaven?
Saving the Great Ming?
He had no interest.
In his eyes, imperial ambitions, vast domains, and the altars of state were all empty illusions.
Transcending oneself and pursuing the great Dao of immortality—only that was eternal.
Thus, without the slightest hesitation, he used his identity as emperor to cast every tedious matter of governance onto the Grand Secretariat as quickly as possible.
He himself immediately moved into Yongshou Palace, the former residence of the most “famous” Daoist practitioner among the emperors of the Great Ming—Emperor Jiajing—and began secluded cultivation.
It had to be said that even with the memories and experience of several hundred years from his previous life, cultivation in such a land without spirit was more difficult than he had imagined.
Spiritual qi was not merely extremely scarce; it was also mostly turbid and mixed, difficult to draw in and absorb.
Fortunately, as the Son of Heaven residing in the Forbidden City, he unexpectedly discovered that he could draw upon two special kinds of spiritual qi and convert them:
One was the ethereal yet truly existent “qi of national fortune,” and the other was the “qi of incense faith” that permeated every part of the palace, accumulated over a hundred years of sedimentation.
It was just that the latter was heavy and muddled, containing impurities from the thoughts of countless living beings, making it extremely difficult to refine.
In any case, after several months of effort, he had finally officially stepped into the first realm of cultivation—
Embryonic Breathing.
Though it was only the lowest-level realm, it meant he was no longer a mortal. He could preliminarily use Purple Mansion-level spiritual sense and cast some of the lowest-grade spells.
This was undoubtedly a vitally important beginning.
At that thought, the Chongzhen Emperor slowly closed his hand, and the spiritual light withdrew into his body.
Just then, the palace doors were pushed open once more.
Led by Han Kuang and Qian Longxi, a procession of Grand Secretaries and important officials of the ministries and courts—Zhou Yanru, Cheng Jiming, Wen Tiren, and the others among them—filed in with solemn expressions.
Everyone took their positions according to rank, bowed toward the figure behind the curtains, and cried out long life.
After the rites were complete, Han Kuang at the front was just about to open his mouth and state their purpose.
But Wen Tiren, standing to the side, swiftly exchanged a glance with Wang Yongguang, the Minister of Personnel, then stepped out ahead of the others and directly threw out the bombshell of the day.
“Your Majesty! This minister has a memorial to present!”
Without waiting for Chongzhen to answer, Wen Tiren continued:
“Yuan Chonghuan, field commander of Ji and Liao, has deceived his sovereign and misled his superiors, allowing the enemy to penetrate deep within our borders. When reinforcements gathered from all directions, he dismissed them all!
“When the bandit troops approached the city, he stubbornly refused to request battle. His intentions are unfathomable!
“Assistant Grand Secretary Qian Longxi, in the matter of the field commander’s defeat, exchanged letters with Yuan Chonghuan. His crime cannot be pardoned.
“This minister earnestly beseeches Your Majesty to punish Yuan Chonghuan and Qian Longxi for the crime of bringing disaster upon the state!”
The assembled ministers were in an uproar.
Qian Longxi’s expression changed drastically.
And Zhu Youjian, at this moment, was pressing the pad of his finger lightly against his temple, both eyes half closed.
With the support of Purple Mansion-level spiritual sense, the vast and complicated memories of his previous life became incomparably clear.
Whether it was fragments of Ming history he had heard in twenty-first-century classrooms, or the endless debates on online forums, all appeared in his sea of consciousness with incomparable vividness.