“When the flames of Yingdu consumed the lingering echoes of the Nine Songs, he used his flesh and blood as ink, carving the defiant words ‘Though I die nine times, I will not regret it’ onto bamboo slips by the Yuan and Xiang rivers. When the waves of the Miluo River drowned the cries for reform, history became a canvas spanning a thousand years, and the quest of ‘The road ahead is long and far’ was reborn in every tree ring as the undying soul of Chu. This is an epic written with the solemn weight of bronze tripods, the mottled grain of bamboo slips, and the chants of dragon-boat rowers. It tells of a poet who sacrificed his life for his homeland, and lays bare the secret of how a civilization is reborn amid blood and fire: the body may sink into the river, but the soul must return to Chu; literature can prolong life, and the law endures for millennia.”
