In the late Ming Dynasty, Spain and Japan gradually restricted the outflow of silver, reversing the capital inflows that had occurred since the early 16th century.
Both the commodity economy, and the small-scale peasant economy of the Ming Dynasty, simultaneously suffered from deflation. Coupled with the impact of the Little Ice Age, the dominoes of chaos began to fall one after another.
In November of the sixth year of the Chongzhen Emperor’s reign, bandits crossed south of Mianchi1, spreading like a festering sore and sweeping across the Central Plains.
In the seventh year of Chongzhen, the Late Jin army, which had ravaged the north for over a decade, swept through Xuanda as if entering an uninhabited land.
The nearly three-hundred-year-old Ming Dynasty was teetering. The protagonist arrives at this time, a minor constable at the yamen in Tongcheng, Southern Zhili.
The story begins with a dead rat soaring into the air.
