Year 30 of Yongjia

The Xiongnu cavalry trampled the lands of the Western Jin beneath their hooves. Gu Linyuan, courtesy name Ziyuan, was the orphaned heir of a noble clan, bearing the blood feud of his family's massacre. From a scion of Luoyang's aristocracy to a slave laborer under Later Zhao, from the Army of the North to a pioneer in Liaodong, he struggled to survive amid the inferno of slaughter between Hu and Han. When the Edict to Kill the Hu sparked a blood-soaked storm, he used paper armor to shield the people and sought the embers of civilization in fragments of ancient texts. At last, in Xuantu City, he raised a stele commemorating Hu-Han intermarriage.

Amid the flames of war, the spark of humanity refused to die.