Gao Shi: Great Tang’s Only Marquess-Bestowed Poet’s Rise to War God

【Fear not that on the road ahead you’ll have no friends; who in the world does not know you?】 His poems were famous across the land, but they couldn’t even earn him half a dou of rice! Gao Shi was an “odd one out” in the Tang literary world. He had sky-high ambitions, yet his humble origins closed doors at every turn, leaving him destitute for half his life. While his classmates recited poetry and admired the moon in Chang’an, he could only swallow the dust and sand at the frontier! The An Lushan Rebellion erupted, turning the world upside down! In this time of national crisis, what use was a scholar? No! Gao Shi resolutely cast aside his brush, fire blazing in his eyes. The world mocked him as a madman: How could a mere man of letters command an army? But he would wield the sword of life and death with the very hand that held a brush! He would devise strategies, launch lightning raids across a thousand miles, put down the Prince of Yong’s rebellion, and repel the Tibetan cavalry! The nobles who had once ridiculed him were trampled beneath his feet; the generals who had once looked down on him now took orders under his command! From penniless poet to military governor of Huainan and Jiannan, commanding armies of thousands! From a nobody to a man whose achievements towered over the court, the only poet in the Tang dynasty to be ennobled for military merit! This is no romantic tale of moonlight and flowers. It is a path to glory forged in iron and blood! Watch Gao Shi tear off the label of “mere scholar,” earn noble rank through brilliant military victories, and establish his immortal fame as the “God of War of the poetry world”! His brush pens poems that startle the wind and rain; his spear cuts through the beacon fires and steadies the realm! His story is only just beginning…