The shame of Jingkang remains unavenged.
The hatred of a subject: when will it end?
Drive our chariots forth and crush the gaps in Helan Mountain.
In the early Southern Song, a series of strange deaths occurred in Yingtian Prefecture. Emperor Gaozong died mysteriously, and Empress Dowager Wei unexpectedly lost her sight.
The exorcist Zhu Sanlang, a green snake, was summoned from the Dali Temple to the imperial palace to exorcise demons and lift curses from the royal family. He concluded that a fox demon was behind all the calamities in Yingtian Prefecture.
On the way back to Dali, he happened upon Xin Qiji, a judicial official in Jiangyin who was also investigating the emperor's cause of death. The two admired one another and shared a natural rapport, so they joined forces to investigate. Their inquiries led them to the Ghost Banquet of Jingkang, held more than thirty years earlier. They reflected on the splendor and decline of the Northern Song, and as their investigation deepened, strange events continued to unfold. Su Bei, a third-rank magistrate at the Dali Temple, presented Yingtian Prefecture with a painting. It depicted the tangled love and hate among the former dynasty's fox demon Yin Li, Consort Qiao, Empress Dowager Wei, and Emperor Huizong of Song. When Empress Dowager Wei heard about it, she could no longer face the world and drank poison to end her life. After seeing the painting, Xin Qiji was overcome with grief and resolved to lay down his pen and take up arms to protect the people of the Southern Song. Years later, he wrote the world-shaking lyric "Breaking the Formation: A Heroic Song for Chen Tongfu."
