I, Zhu Yihai, the tenth-generation descendant of the glorious founding Emperor Taizu,

Even if I must climb islands to gnaw on sweet potatoes, or fight guerrilla wars across the seas,

I will never surrender to the Manchu barbarians!

I swear to resist the Qing to the death, to restore the Ming Dynasty,

and to revive the great civilization of Huaxia!

Let the sea be my fortress,

Let ships be my palace,

And the deck my imperial court.

As the sun sets and the waves roar, the ruler and his ministers confer,

On shattered reefs and desolate isles, the nobles and loyalists gather.

Drive out the Manchu invaders and restore China!

Let the Emperor of the Seas achieve his great legacy!

The writer who roams across East Asia has once again traveled through time—this time to the city of Edo in the year 1841. Although he is neither a prince nor a general at the peak of power, his upward journey remains full of excitement and mystery.

"Those who excel in learning become officials; those who excel as officials become chancellors; those who excel as chancellors serve the great nation."

The Chinese nation shares a common dream of becoming a great power. Whether in the past, present, or future, it is a dream worth striving for. This is the story of the man who forged the world’s greatest nation in the 16th century.

In the spring of the 36th year of the Jiajing reign, a modern man who had failed to carry the mission of China in his original life is reborn into the body of a poor scholar in a remote mountain village in western Guangdong. He later passes the imperial exams and enters the bureaucracy, quickly finding a new direction for his life’s purpose. From that moment, the history of the Chinese nation begins to be rewritten...