The year is: 1628. The most able general of the Ming Emperor Chongzhen, is appointed as supreme military leader of the North-East Army. His name was: Yuan Chonghuan.

He belonged to one of the highest aristocratic families of the Ming Dynasty. He was a highly educated intelligent intellectual, but did not have any formal military training. This is why his military career started under the wing of the great general Sun Chengzong, fighting the invading Manchu troops for ten years. The borders of the Empire were pushed North. But it was clear that it was just a matter of time before he would have to defend his home land against the Manchus.

He had to learn, and he had to learn fast, as his mentor fell out of the Emperor’s favors.

He did so by winning every battle against the invaders even when he was badly outnumbered.

In spite of his loyalty and service to the country, he fell to the politics of the Court, especially of the eunuchs who managed to convince the Emperor that he was a traitor. He was executed by “slow slicing” on September 22, 1630.

The Emperor lost the only man capable to defeat the invaders from the North.

It only took the Manchus fourteen years to conquer the whole China, enter Beijing and establish a new Dinasty: Qing.

The legend goes that the great general cursed the Emperor to reach a time when he would have to kill his own children. In 1644, the Emperor did kill his children because he did not want them to fall alive into the hands of the peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng, rebels who broke the walls of the Forbidden City and put an end to the Ming Dynasty. The Emperor committed suicide by hanging himself.

The curse would have to find its finality after nine generations had passed; the decedents of the actors participating at both 1630 and 1644 events would have to come together and fight each other.

Two of the active personages of the seventeenth century episodes, were Portuguese sailors, apparently appointed at the Court as the preferred traders of goods for the Emperor’s Court. And this is how, nine generations later, two Americans discovered that they are intrinsic part of the curse.

Their lives will change forever.