Twenty years after the Jingkang Incident, Jinan Prefecture lies under the iron heel of the Jin. Sixteen-year-old Han Yanqiu smashes a Jin inspector’s wine jar at the prefectural school, then turns and runs into Shen Heng, a young woman from Jiangnan carrying a book of sheet music. The trouble sparked by their youthful bravado leads to the mystery of his origins: his father, Han Bo’an, was an anti-Jin patriot who vanished eight years ago after a bloody battle on the banks of the Hutuo River. The half of a tiger tally his mother pressed into his hand on her deathbed brings black-clad assassins after him on a rainy night.
