Striving in the Late Hongwu Reign

Driving out the Northern Yuan and sweeping the realm clean, the founding emperor of the Ming had to die sooner or later.

Scholars take control of the state, vassal kings lurk like tigers, and through the bloody knives of the reduction of princely power and the Jingnan campaign, a fierce new Ming Dynasty is carved out.

An unemployed Jinyiwei, a lowly nobody, holds a sword in his left hand and a hoe in his right, using one sword to settle the realm and one hoe to feed the people.

This is the tortuous story of a small spy struggling to become a great lord of a prosperous age.

The Ming dynasty’s golden age weighed on by a thousand-pound burden; the Jinyiwei bear eight hundred!

Open *The Yongle Encyclopedia*, and there is my legend on every page!