In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen's reign, the news of the fall of the capital was like thunder that shattered the dream of spring in the south of the Yangtze River. The world of Yangzhou scholar Lu Zhaoyuan suddenly fell from the fragrance of pen and ink in the "Pillow Sutra Pavilion" to a purgatory of blood and fire.
He was once an elegant scholar who copied Zhao's small regular script and firmly believed in the sage's admonition of "loyalty, filial piety, chastity and righteousness". However, when the rebels massacred his family, he personally swung his sword and opened the chest of the first enemy. At the moment when the domestic servant Ah Fu used his flesh and blood to shield him from the arrow, the "Gang Jian Yi Zhi Lu" in the study and the blood-stained simple knife completed the most cruel replacement in his heart.
In the city of Nanjing, the overwhelming voice of the Hongguang court could not cover up the flash of swords and shadows in the four towns in Jiangbei; in the governor's house of Shi Kefa, the empty talk of the Donglin Party members could not match the arrogance of the powerful generals. When the governor, who was famous for his sacrifice for his country, extended an olive branch to him, Lu Zhaoyuan finally understood: in the rules of survival in troubled times, there is no pure loyalty, only broken ideals and bloody choices.
He put away his inkstone, shouldered his sword, and walked among the warlords and courtiers as a scholar. He not only wanted to protect his family from Gao Jie's rogue soldiers, but also wanted to preserve Shi Kefa's anti-Qing fire in the whirlpool of Ma Shiying's party strife. The tactics and calculations he once despised eventually became his only shield to protect "morality".
In Jiangnan, where the setting sun was like blood, he used pen and ink as armor and sword as courage, trying to carve a way out for himself, his family, and a dying dynasty in the collapsing world. And at the end of this road is perseverance that is more difficult than dying for one's country - living as a glimmer of light that refuses to be extinguished in despair.
