Emperor Yingzong died of illness, and his eldest son Zhao Xu succeeded him. In order to reverse the decline of the Song Dynasty, which was poor and weak, Zhao Xu promoted Wang Anshi to prime minister and presided over the reform. Wang Anshi led a group of young talents to reform the empire's politics, economy, military, culture, and education, and promulgated a series of new laws. After ten years of hard practice, the Song Dynasty basically achieved the goal of strengthening the country and enriching the people, and laid a solid financial foundation for the country's ambition to regain Yanyun and realize territorial integrity and sovereignty. However, reforms inevitably touch upon the vested interests of certain classes of people, who are bound to use various means to create rumors, magnify the local boils that occurred during the reform into a major nationwide fault, slander the New Party members for their unethical and ungovernable actions, and slander the new law as a move that harms the country and the people. Therefore, the reform faction headed by Wang Anshi and the reform cause for which he devoted his efforts have been burdened with a heavy stigma in the course of thousands of years of history, and were even once regarded as the main culprit for the demise of the Northern Song Dynasty Empire. Faced with the constant attacks from the conservative faction, in order to appease people's hearts, Wang Anshi was willing to resign and encouraged Emperor Zhao Xu and the officials of the reform faction to move forward bravely, push the reform cause further, and achieve overall victory.
The novel describes the general situation of the Xining Dynasty in the Northern Song Dynasty, the turmoil of the court and the suffering of the people's livelihood, and expresses the iron will, firm belief and persistent pursuit of Wang Anshi, a reformer. The prosperity of a country is inseparable from the courage, responsibility and wisdom of these leaders of the era to turn the tide. Over the course of thousands of years, history will always give a fair assessment of their achievements!
