A piece of news so outrageous it practically kicked the doors open before anyone could announce it properly stormed into the capital, and for a brief moment even the ever-tense air of Beijing forgot how to breathe.
Hangzhou had erupted into rebellion.
Not some distant, starving wasteland where drought and despair usually fermented into chaos, not one of those forgotten corners where people revolted because they had nothing left to lose, but Hangzhou, rich, refined, soaked in silk and commerce, a place that should have been too comfortable to even consider rebellion, let alone actually commit to it.
The shock hit Zhu Youjian like a misplaced thunderclap, and judging by the way the court collectively froze, it hit the civil and military officials just as hard, if not harder.
Rebellions had been everywhere since the Tianqi years, that much was true, but those were predictable disasters born from famine, taxes, and the slow grinding cruelty of survival, whereas this, this was something else entirely, something that did not fit into the neat, miserable logic everyone had grown accustomed to.
Hangzhou rebelling felt less like a crisis and more like a violation of common sense.
It did not take long before detailed intelligence reports arrived, and once the officials finished reading them, the confusion shifted into a very different kind of disbelief, the sort that made people reread the same line several times just to confirm that reality had not quietly gone insane.
The culprits were merchants.
Not starving peasants, not desperate soldiers, not bandits crawling out of the hills, but merchants, well-fed, well-dressed, and apparently far too comfortable with ideas that the court immediately labeled as outrageously treasonous.
A group of them had gathered in Hangzhou for what was supposed to be a meeting, the kind of gathering that usually revolved around profit margins, shipping routes, and the delicate art of making money without offending the wrong official, except this time they had decided to discuss something far more dangerous, ideas that drifted well beyond the acceptable boundaries of survival and straight into the territory of political audacity.
Unfortunately for them, the Jinyiwei had caught wind of it and showed up uninvited, as they tended to do when people forgot their place.
Now, if the officials expected an easy arrest, they clearly did not understand Hangzhou merchants.
These were not harmless shopkeepers counting coins behind wooden counters, many of them had one foot on land and the other firmly planted at sea, dealing in trade routes that stretched far beyond the empire, and if one wanted a cultural reference, one might recall the legendary Li Huamei, a seafaring powerhouse who just so happened to hail from the same city, which should have been warning enough.
When the Jinyiwei arrived, the merchants did not kneel, did not beg, and certainly did not wait patiently to be dragged away.
They fought.
Their household guards moved first, fast and decisive, and before anyone could pretend this was still a routine investigation, the Jinyiwei agents lay dead, their authority abruptly and violently canceled.
At that point, there was no returning to normal life, no quiet explanation, no clever excuse that could smooth things over.
So the merchants did what people do when they realize they have already crossed the line and might as well keep walking.
They rebelled.
Not like bandits, though, not like the usual chaos-driven mobs who burned everything in sight and called it strategy, but in a way that reflected exactly who they were, pragmatic, calculated, and disturbingly organized.
Instead of looting, they spent money.
Instead of chaos, they built structure.
They began recruiting desperate men, offering silver in exchange for loyalty, assembling a makeshift army not out of ideology but out of necessity, because survival, at the end of the day, always needed a price tag.
Unlike the roaming rebels who fought simply because there was nothing else left to do, these merchants had demands, long, detailed, and dangerously reasonable demands.
They called for the lifting of the maritime ban, for open trade with Western powers, for strict regulation against corrupt officials who treated merchants like walking treasure chests, and for legal protection of their class, not as parasites to be squeezed but as contributors to the empire's prosperity.
And that, more than the killings, more than the rebellion itself, was what truly enraged Zhu Youjian.
Who exactly had given them the audacity to sound reasonable?
"Mobilize the nearby troops immediately and crush them…"
He had not even finished the sentence when a young eunuch rushed in, breathless and pale in a way that suggested the situation had already escalated beyond anything the emperor would enjoy hearing.
"Your Majesty, this is bad, very bad."
Zhu Youjian frowned, already irritated, already expecting incompetence, but not quite prepared for what came next.
"What now."
"The Prince of Tang, Zhu Yujian, who has been missing for a long time, has appeared in Hangzhou, and he has publicly declared that the merchants' demands are justified and should be implemented."
For a moment, the world did not collapse, it simply stopped making sense.
Then it exploded inside his head.
A group of merchants rebelling was a problem, yes, but it was the kind of problem that could be erased with orders, troops, and enough force to remind everyone how power worked.
A prince joining them, however, turned the entire situation into something far more dangerous, something that could not be crushed without consequences rippling outward in ways no one could fully control.
And when Zhu Youjian connected this with the growing chorus of voices across the empire calling him a foolish ruler, the pieces clicked together in a way that made his entire body go cold.
This was no longer a disturbance.
This was a threat.
"Jinyiwei, Eastern Depot, Western Depot, all of them move, mobilize the Hangzhou garrison, and since these are sea merchants, they must have naval strength, send orders to Fujian, have the roaming general Zheng Zhilong intercept them from the sea, I want every force we have moving at once, and I want Zhu Yujian captured and brought back immediately."
---
At that very moment, far from the suffocating tension of the capital, Zhu Yujian himself was sitting in a garden on the outskirts of Hangzhou, looking far too composed for a man who had just inserted himself into a rebellion.
In front of him sat a group of merchants, the very same ones who had been forced into open defiance after killing the Jinyiwei, men who had already prepared ships to flee to the South Seas if everything collapsed, while simultaneously throwing money at recruitment efforts in a desperate attempt to build something resembling an army.
They did not know what their future looked like.
But when Zhu Yujian appeared, it felt as if the fog had parted just enough for them to glimpse a path forward, uncertain, dangerous, but undeniably real.
"Your Highness, Prince of Tang," one of them asked, unable to hide the mixture of hope and caution in his voice, "do you truly support us?"
Zhu Yujian let out a soft sigh, the kind that suggested he had thought about this long before arriving.
"Yes, I do, because your demands are not madness, they are, in fact, painfully reasonable, lifting the maritime ban, engaging in trade with the West, protecting merchants from predatory officials, these are not acts of rebellion, they are corrections to a system that has been allowed to rot."
The reaction was immediate.
Relief, excitement, disbelief, all colliding at once as the merchants looked at one another, as if confirming that they had not collectively misheard something so important.
Zhu Yujian continued, his tone calm but carrying a weight that made it clear he was not speaking lightly.
"I believe these policies need to change, not as a favor to you, but for the good of the nation."
That was all it took.
The room erupted.
"So Your Highness intends to lead us…"
Zhu Yujian nodded.
That single motion nearly broke whatever restraint the merchants had left.
One of them reacted first, dropping to his knees with a thud that echoed louder than expected.
"Your Highness, I am willing to offer my entire fortune as military funding, I will support your ascension with everything I have."
The others cursed themselves internally for reacting a moment too late, scrambling to follow, kneeling one after another, each eager not to fall behind in what was rapidly turning into a competition of loyalty.
"I too am willing to risk everything."
"I will stake my life."
Zhu Yujian smiled, almost amused by their urgency.
"There is no need to go that far, even without your full support, I possess sufficient strength, all you need to do is stand firm in your beliefs."
That answer did not reassure them.
If anything, it confused them even more.
They exchanged looks, silently asking the same question.
Where exactly was this strength coming from?
He had been wandering for years, his estate gone, his resources supposedly nonexistent, and yet here he was, speaking as if power were something he carried casually in his sleeve.
Before they could press further, a servant rushed in, panic written all over his face.
"This is bad, very bad, Zheng Zhilong's fleet is heading toward Hangzhou."
That name alone was enough to drain the color from the merchants' faces.
Their confidence had always relied on one simple escape route, the sea.
If land failed them, they could sail away, disappear into the vast network of trade routes stretching toward the South Seas.
But Zheng Zhilong was the sea.
His influence dominated those waters like a silent law, and crossing him was not bravery, it was suicide.
They could challenge the court.
They could not challenge him.
"What do we do now, what do we do…"
Panic spread quickly, messy and unrestrained, until Zhu Yujian raised a hand, his expression calm in a way that felt almost unreasonable.
"There is no need to panic, we will go out to meet him at sea, I happen to have a few things I would like to discuss with General Zheng."
The merchants did not understand.
But they followed.
Because at this point, confusion was still preferable to despair.
---
At the shore, a ship was already waiting.
It was enormous, unfamiliar, and deeply unsettling in the way it simply existed without sails or oars, as if it had decided that the usual rules of movement did not apply to it.
They boarded, cautiously at first, then in growing numbers, along with their guards, yet the ship barely reacted, carrying them as if weight itself had become optional.
It moved smoothly into the open sea.
Questions piled up in their minds, but none of them dared to ask directly.
Not yet.
Soon, Zheng Zhilong's fleet appeared on the horizon, vast and imposing, a display of power that could have crushed ordinary resistance without effort.
The merchants braced themselves.
But something unexpected happened.
The fleet did not attack.
Instead, a single flagship, a massive Dutch-style sailing vessel, broke formation and approached alone, slow and deliberate, like someone choosing conversation over violence.
The two ships aligned.
Then, to everyone's utter disbelief, Zheng Zhilong, along with his key figures including Zheng Zhihu and Zheng Zhifeng, casually leaped across, smiling as if they were attending a friendly gathering rather than a potential battlefield.
The merchants stood frozen, their understanding of the situation collapsing piece by piece.
Zhu Yujian stepped forward, raising a hand in greeting, his smile calm, almost familiar.
"General Zheng, I have long heard of your reputation."
Zheng Zhilong laughed, equally at ease.
"Your Highness, the Prince of Tang, I have long heard of yours as well."
They spoke like strangers.
And yet, nothing about their tone suggested this was their first meeting.
The merchants could only stare.
Completely lost.