Blood of Ming

Blood of Ming is a historical time-travel web novel by Lao Mao. Serialized on Qidian from 2009 to its completion in August 2011, it runs about 1.36 million characters across 465 chapters in four volumes: Storms over the Realm, Blood Battle in the Central Plains, Ming Resurgent, and Empire Rising in the East. Modern-day man Wang Fu wakes to find himself the first emperor of the Southern Ming—the Hongguang Emperor. Knowing well how the Southern Ming court ended in history, his first thought is simple and direct: get out fast, find an island overseas to settle on, and survive first. But circumstances leave him no time for a calm withdrawal. The Qing army presses south, and the massacres of Yangzhou and the Three Slayings of Jiading follow one after another, until he can no longer treat it all as history on paper. Wang Fu shifts from passive evasion to open confrontation: he reorganizes the capital garrison, recruits new troops, reforms the armory and firearms equipment, and promotes civil and military officials who still have some fighting spirit, managing to hold the line north of the Yangtze. In a series of battles—the great battle of Jiujiang, the bloody battle of Jinan—Ming and Qing forces seesaw back and forth, victory shifting several times; and for this he is suspected and constrained at court, forced to fight a war while handling factional strife and the whims of men. Starting from the Hongguang reign, the novel weaves historical resisters such as Shi Kefa, Yan Yingyuan, and Xia Wanchun into the story, using the phrase "Blood of Ming" to signify the sacrifice of those who knew it could not be done and did it anyway in a time of chaos, tracing a time traveler swept up by his era who finally chooses to share the fate of a dynasty on the verge of collapse.