The General's estate is razed overnight, and the entire family is executed.
The legitimate daughter, Yun Shu, claws her way out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, reduced to a beggar and left to taste every kindness and cruelty the world has to offer.
After fleeing the capital, a blizzard brings a small city to its knees. Driven by the sense of duty she inherited as a general's daughter, she steps forward to shelter the refugees.
After a long and arduous journey, she reaches the border her father once swore to defend to the death, where she faces her fated enemy: Helian Feng, crown prince of the Canglang Kingdom.
The hatred of a family feud and a national vendetta tears at her, but when she witnesses the border city's dire plight, Yun Shu resolutely disguises herself as a man and takes up her father's legacy. On the walls where her forebears once shed their blood, she fights to protect the countless people behind her.
But as she battles in a rain of blood, news from the capital pierces her like ice: the emperor of Dasheng has long since abandoned them without remorse, consumed by infighting over the throne, and sent the border city plunging into despair.
I like the beautiful and elegant writing style.