The Song Ci Casebook: A Heart Pure as Snow

During the Qingyuan era of the Southern Song, Emperor Ningzong Zhao Kuo was incompetent and spent his days drowning in pleasure at the pavilions beyond the green hills. The treacherous chancellor Han Tuozhou held the reins of government. Ignoring the kingdom's troubles at home and abroad, he planned to raise an army from across the land and launch a northern campaign, hoping to achieve an unprecedented triumph. For a time, beneath Lin'an's flourishing songs and dances and glittering extravagance, undercurrents swirled and danger lurked at every turn, while murderous intent suddenly emerged. National enmity and family grudges, loyalty and betrayal, conflict and conspiracy: powerful ministers, generals commanding armies, patriotic scholars, Jin spies, extraordinary martial heroes, and hidden masters among the common people all brought their own cunning schemes and displayed their skills in this unfathomable whirlpool of history...