The Great Qing's Wicked Lord

The Great Qing's Wicked Lord is a long historical novel of time travel to the Qing dynasty by Saiwai Liuyun. It began serialization on Qidian in 2012 and was completed on May 23, 2013, running about 2.0358 million characters in 749 chapters and categorized as "History · Qing History and Republic of China." The story opens with an ordinary modern homebody, Zhang Desheng, who is in a car accident and wakes up as the Kangxi Emperor's fourteenth son, Aisin Gioro Yinzhen, inheriting the body's original memories. From then on he is drawn into the turbulent succession struggle of Kangxi's later years: the crown prince is installed and deposed twice, the eldest prince, the Eighth Prince's faction, and the Fourth Prince's faction each harbor their own designs, and the princes scheme openly and covertly for the throne. Yinzhen intervenes in this "Nine Kings Contest" with modern eyes and methods: he founds draft banks and issues silver notes, proposes a gold-standard-style monetary scheme to put finances in order; he promotes Western learning, recruits missionaries and firearms specialists, and values technology; he plans an ocean-going fleet, runs maritime trade, and lays out coastal defense for Taiwan and Fujian. He maneuvers among Kangxi and the princes and high officials, pushing his proposals forcefully through a mix of open and covert tactics, so that the princes both fear him and can do nothing about him. The novel takes early-Qing court politics and institutional reform as its main line, weaving in historical events such as the Jiangnan examination case and the Nanshan Collection case, and depicts how a modern soul seeks change within the structure of Qing imperial power.