He Who Drowned the World

The second and final installment of the Radiant Emperor duology, set in an alternate 14th-century China during the collapse of the Mongol Empire of the Great Yuan, follows three principal characters as they scheme, betray, and sacrifice in pursuit of the Dragon Throne.

In 1356, Zhu Yuanzhang, secretly a woman disguised as a man, has seized leadership of the Red Turban rebel movement and declared herself the Radiant King. She possesses the Mandate of Heaven, a supernatural flame signifying her potential to become emperor. Her kingdom, based in Yingtian on the Yangzi River, faces powerful rivals: the wealthy Zhang merchant family to the east, led nominally by the incompetent "Rice Bucket" Zhang Shicheng but controlled by his wife, a former courtesan known as the Queen; and the brutal former rebel leader Chen Youliang to the west. When Madam Zhang demands surrender, Zhu refuses and hatches a plan to steal the army of General Ouyang, who occupies the city of Bianliang with forces seized from the Mongol Prince of Henan he murdered.

Ouyang, consumed by grief for Esen-Temur, the prince he loved and killed, endures his pain to stay alive long enough to reach the capital Dadu and kill the Great Khan, whom he blames for his family's destruction. When his deputy Shao stages a coup and imprisons him, Zhu arrives disguised as a silk merchant. She plants explosive-treated silk that sets the city ablaze and, amid the chaos, frees both Ouyang and her captured wife, Ma Xiuying. Ouyang kills Shao, but as his army exits the burning city, Zhu's forces ambush them. She offers a deal: help defeat the Zhangs, then march north to Dadu, where she will let him kill the Great Khan. Powerless, Ouyang accepts.

Esen-Temur's younger half-brother Wang Baoxiang, a disdained scholar whose effeminacy has made him an object of contempt, arrives at the Great Khan's court. Consumed by rage at the world's rejection, Baoxiang possesses his own Mandate of Heaven, one that manifests as black flame, and plans to destroy the world Esen loved. He secures a position in the Ministry of Revenue, begins a calculated sexual relationship with the Great Khan's son, the Third Prince, to gain protection, and builds spy networks monitoring every major player. He secretly funds Chen Youliang's military buildup and distributes posters throughout Pingjiang, the Zhang family's walled capital, hinting at the affair between Madam Zhang and Rice Bucket's brother, General Zhang.

With salt secured from a coastal raid, Zhu turns against Zhang territory. When General Zhang's superior tactics stall the advance, Zhu abducts his son and uses a blood-draining timer to force surrender. Before the exchange is completed, Rice Bucket, enraged by the cuckold posters, has his brother assassinated with an arrow. Ouyang kills General Zhang's young son, giving the boy a sword so he can die fighting, and buries father and son together. Zhu routs the leaderless army and offers Ouyang his sword back, proposing a true alliance. She grasps the blade with her phantom hand, the spectral form of her missing right hand, sealing their bond. Ouyang agrees.

Madam Zhang poisons Rice Bucket after he beats and rapes her over the poster scandal. She receives a letter from Baoxiang offering an alliance, tests his claim to the Mandate, and, satisfied of his power, agrees to provide her army. In Dadu, Baoxiang frames the Grand Councilor and the Minister of Revenue for treason using forged account books stamped with the ministerial seal the Minister had entrusted to him. Both men are executed, and Baoxiang takes the Minister's position, gaining control of the empire's finances.

As Zhu besieges Pingjiang, Chen Youliang attacks her southern city of Nanchang, forcing her to withdraw. She secures a fleet from the pirate lord Fang Guozhen by forcing Ouyang to win Fang's women-only fighting competition in disguise, then reveals her female body to prove she competed legitimately. Zhu's engineer Jiao Yu, having lost faith in Zhu's chances, identifies Baoxiang as the hidden orchestrator of events and defects to him, first revealing Zhu's sex to Ouyang. Devastated by what he sees as the ultimate deception, Ouyang rejects Zhu and takes his army to march alone on Dadu.

In the capital, Baoxiang engineers the Empress's death through a miscarriage-inducing medicine that kills her because she was never actually pregnant. The resulting fallout leads to the death of the Third Prince, whom Baoxiang watches die in anguish despite having orchestrated the conditions that caused it. Lady Ki, the Great Khan's Goryeo-born consort and the Third Prince's mother, is arrested and exiled.

Zhu leads her fleet against Chen at Lake Poyang. Chen has created an underwater barricade of hungry ghosts, spirits formed from desecrated bodies that drain the life force of anyone who passes. Zhu has her soldiers drowned in sealed compartments, carried through as corpses immune to the ghosts, then revived on the other side. Xu Da, Zhu's sworn brother and general, volunteers to ignite an oil slick around Chen's fireproofed fleet, knowing the act will kill him. The conflagration destroys most of Chen's ships. In the final confrontation, Zhu's phantom hand manifests with blinding light that burns Chen, sending him overboard. Xu Da dies in Zhu's arms.

Ouyang, facing a central army weakened by Baoxiang's machinations, fights his way to Dadu and drives his sword through the Great Khan's chest. Baoxiang enters and reveals that Ouyang's father was never executed but has been alive in prison for decades, having begged for mercy rather than dying heroically. The frail old man fails to recognize his son, and Commander Geng, secretly Baoxiang's agent, stabs Ouyang through the back. Ouyang dies, his ghost remaining in the hall still clutching his broken sword. Baoxiang takes the throne and calls for Esen's ghost to witness his triumph, but Esen does not appear. He realizes the ghost was never real; he had been projecting his own grief, performing for an audience that never existed.

Learning Baoxiang holds the throne with Madam Zhang as empress, Zhu travels to Goryeo, where the exiled Lady Ki proposes a plan: The Great Khan is only ever alone with a consort. Ma enters the palace as a Goryeo tribute consort. The Great Khan summons her intending humiliation, but Ma meets his cruelty with compassion and becomes his favorite. Zhu infiltrates the palace as a slave. When Jiao Yu, now the Great Khan's minister, recognizes Zhu and runs to warn him, Ma has her maids strangle Jiao. The Great Khan's forces then capture Zhu's commander Yuchun, who has cut off his own right hand to impersonate Zhu, and plan his public execution.

Atop a palace pagoda, Zhu reveals herself to Madam Zhang, who refuses to accept that someone who is neither man nor woman could claim the throne. Madam Zhang attacks and stumbles over the railing to her death. In the Hall of Great Brilliance, the imperial throne room, Ma bars the doors as Zhu enters disguised as a maid. Zhu approaches Ouyang's lingering ghost and draws forth his spectral sword, which her Mandate transforms into a blade of pure light. She forces the Great Khan to his knees.

Then she stops. Beginning her new world with vengeance would only perpetuate the old cycle. She demands the Great Khan relinquish his Mandate instead. Ma kneels before him and takes his hand, telling him that what he felt was real. After an agonizing struggle, the black shadow of his Mandate rises and dissolves. Zhu tells him to choose a new name and live as his true self. She turns to Ouyang's ghost, promising to bury him beside Esen and build a monument to their names. She touches his cheek, and his ghost vanishes. Zhu ascends the throne and names her new dynasty Ming, meaning "radiant light."