The Late Ming: I Hold the Reins

The Late Ming: I Hold the Reins is an alternate-history novel by the web author Lan Kui Shijiu, serialized on Baidu Novels and other platforms and now complete. Its opening is richly legendary: Lin Daokuan, a young man scraping by in Beijing, hikes Mount Wuling in low spirits, gets drunk, and inadvertently saves a spirit fox; with the fox's aid his soul crosses time and lands in the Prince Xin mansion at the end of the Ming, becoming Zhu Youjian, the future Chongzhen Emperor. He wakes in a carved and painted mansion, attended by a maid named Wan'er who calls him "Your Highness, Prince Xin." Imperial physicians, court officials, and eunuchs file in one after another, and a life at court he cannot control begins. The story thus opens at the volatile juncture of the late Tianqi years, before Chongzhen takes the throne. Armed with a modern man's knowledge and habits of mind, the protagonist first finds his footing inside the Prince Xin mansion, practices martial arts and archery, and gathers people around him. He is then drawn into the struggle between the eunuch faction and the Donglin Party, meets Wei Zhongxian, officials of the Ministry of War, and frontier commanders, and begins by reorganizing the firearms bureau, founding a military academy, and reforming the military system, step by step trying to extend the life of the Great Ming. Japanese pirates raid Shandong, displaced peasants rise in Shaanxi, and the Later Jin loom over Liaodong; as internal and external threats press in layer upon layer, the protagonist moves simultaneously in the court and on the battlefield, maneuvering against the old bureaucracy while building a new-model army and a system of craftsmen. Titled "I Hold the Reins," the work imagines one man trying to reverse the tide in a dying age, and belongs to the strand of late-Ming time-travel fiction that emphasizes military and political reform and institutional building.