In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, natural and man-made disasters occurred, and the empire was about to collapse. Although Emperor Chongzhen tried his best to govern, it was difficult to turn the tide from collapse. In this war-torn land, fate tightly entangles three unrelated people:
Lin Qingyuan, a fallen scholar who was saddled with a family injustice, struggled painfully between loyalty to the king and saving the country and self-salvation; Zhang Zheng, a soldier in the frontier army who was forced to go to Liangshan, was tempered into a generational hero in the blood and fire of troubled times; Su Wanqing, a Jiangnan embroiderer whose family was ruined, relied on her extraordinary wisdom and resilience to establish a huge business and intelligence network in a world dominated by men.
From the misty rain in the south of the Yangtze River to the yellow sand in the north of the Great Wall, from the strangeness of the court to the fighting on the battlefield, the three of them fell in love with each other, supported each other and plotted against each other, and together they witnessed the final dusk of the empire. When Li Zicheng's iron hoof breaks through Beijing, and when Wu Sangui's switch attracts the cavalry from outside the customs, they must make the final choice: be loyal to a passed dynasty, protect the common people under their feet, or... Create a new era of their own?
This is a tragic epic in which personal destiny is intertwined with that of family, country and world, and a grand narrative about ideals, betrayal, love and ambition.
