During the Duanping era of the Southern Song, Mongol cavalry tramples the land, and the Jingxiang defensive line teeters on the brink of collapse. Feng Rui, a modern young man, transmigrates by accident into the body of a low-ranking frontier soldier and fights for his life in a bloody battle at a Tangzhou fortress. A Ke Di Gong bow with its string cut exposes a shocking scandal of corruption in the military workshops. “Yue Family Army” troops impersonated by Western Xia’s Iron Hawks reopen old wounds left by the Song court’s twelve imperial edicts. Niter hidden among tea bricks aboard a grain ship reveals a deadly deal between the imperial palace at Lin’an and the Mongols and Western Xia.
With military insight more than a thousand years ahead of its time, Feng Rui uses technology to restore China’s edge. Improved Shenbi crossbows pierce the heavy armor of the Jing Sai troops; arsenic and flaming oil incinerate Mongol siege carts; and cold-forged steel crossbows break through the espionage plot in Yingzhou. He maneuvers between Meng Gong’s ironclad defenses and Yu Jie’s vision of mountain fortresses, from poison-smoke explosions aboard grain ships in Jiangling to a desperate escape across the frozen Han River, from a deadly formation of light and shadow that burns the enemy cavalry to the iron ramparts he builds atop Diaoyu City. With a craftsman’s ingenuity, he breaks through schemes of political intrigue.
Shi Songzhi’s secret tea-for-horses pact, Consort Yan’s hidden tiger tally, and Lü Wenhuan’s inner demons over surrendering to the Mongols form a vast net that devours loyal souls. A secret letter bearing the Western Xia empress dowager’s jade tablet, Mongol spies’ lifelike mechanical devices, and the time paradox created by fellow transmigrators stir hidden currents that threaten to overturn history. When Xiangyang’s cannons shatter the thin ice on the Han River, and ten-shot repeating crossbows blot out the rainy night in the Ba Mountains, a mere soldier stands in the light of famous generals like Meng Gong and Yu Jie and rebuilds the backbone of the Great Song, with the Essentials of the Military Classics as his foundation and modern technology as his blade.
This is a technological revolution in the age of cold weapons,
An epic of a frontier soldier rising to become a great general,
A song of “Man Jiang Hong” blazing beneath the iron hooves of the Mongols and Western Xia.
In the flood of history, only courage and wisdom can never be drowned.
