The Long Song of the Ashes

In the final years of the Southern Song, blacksmith’s son Chen Ke is thrown into the hell of war amid the blood and flames of Xiangyang’s fall. After saving his beloved’s dying father, he gains no peace. Instead, he receives a bloodstained copy of the family’s inherited military treatise, The Essentials of the Military Classics, and a dying plea: “Hold the Yangtze.”

From a corrupt army camp to the bloody battle at Ezhou, from the deaths of brothers-in-arms to being forced to execute his closest friend, Chen Ke’s ideals collapse again and again under the weight of cruel reality. The relentless military commissioner Du Heng also reveals the cold truth of an old family grudge.

At sea off Yashan, the empire’s final fleet is engulfed in flames and sinks. When the chancellor carries the emperor into the sea, Chen Ke kills the enemy who betrayed them, but chooses to survive with his beloved. Carrying the military treatise that has passed through the fires of war and bearing the hopes of the departed, he becomes the guardian of civilization’s last spark in its darkest hour.

Eight hundred years later, the Southern Song shipwreck buried beneath the sea gives up the copy of The Essentials of the Military Classics that was protected at the cost of a life. A blurred line of small writing on the back cover tells of an unending song:

“The song goes on, the flame lives forever.”