In Tianbao Year Fourteen, the Tang dynasty’s renowned general Feng Changqing died, undone by a eunuch’s slander and the incompetence of Li Longji, the sage ruler who had once made the Tang the mightiest empire on earth. Before his execution, Feng Changqing submitted his memorial, “Feng Changqing’s Memorial of Gratitude for His Death.”
Every word was written in blood, his loyalty witnessed by Heaven!
But it was no use!
The Tang dynasty that stretched 9,900 li westward to Anxi!
The prosperous Tang, extending east to the Sea of Japan, south to Annam, west to the Aral Sea, and north beyond Lake Baikal, with a territory of 12.37 million square kilometers!
It was gone!
Shazhou, the Zhang family mansion.
A young man was bent over his desk, carefully copying “Feng Changqing’s Memorial of Gratitude for His Death,” stroke by stroke. He was none other than Zhang Yichao, the man who had once lamented, “Who understands a hero’s ambition? A lone minister’s loyal heart longs to return to the empire.”
More precisely, this Zhang Yichao was not that Zhang Yichao. He was a Zhang Yichao with the advanced knowledge and ideas of a later age, and the same fervent spirit!
He came from a comfortable family. For generations, the Dunhuang Zhangs had served as governors of Shazhou. They were one of Dunhuang’s leading clans. All he had to do was bury his head in Shazhou’s sands, and he could live out his days in comfort.
But he couldn’t do it!
And he wasn’t the only one. None of the people of Shazhou who still considered themselves Han Chinese could do it!
They were all waiting, waiting for an opportunity!
An uprising fueled by decades of accumulated hatred was impossible to stop. Zhang Yichao raised his long saber and charged at the front of the ranks,
shouting, “Anyone who stands in the way of our return to the Tang today will die!”
