The Emperor's Brush: Painting the Realm

Xiao Yuanshan, the Great Liang Kingdom's General Who Pacifies the North, died in battle. The military map was wrong, and foul play was suspected. The young general Xiao Che brought the painter Shen Yunxi out of the imperial prison and traded a brush for his shackles: "Paint me the real battlefield." The frail scholar was thrust into a mire of blood and flesh, trembling as he painted amid broken arrows and cries of agony. The night the enemy set fire to the army's provisions, he lay atop a pile of corpses to map the stars; when the general fell unconscious from poison, he tore off a strip of his robe and used his own blood to sketch the enemy's defenses. At the final battle, Xiao Che tied him to the highest point of the battle flag: "Show us the way!" Wherever his vermilion brush pointed, the cavalry trampled the enemy's royal encampment. On the day of their triumphal return, the emperor bestowed upon him the golden seal of "Imperial Brush General" and a plaque inscribed "The Realm Captured in Paint."