Using historical facts as the skeleton and literary imagination as the flesh and blood, it deeply explores the stories behind the mysterious deaths of many monarchs during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Through an "archive"-style structure, the work shows how these once-all-powerful monarchs came to a tragic end due to backlash from power, character flaws, and tricks of fate.
The novel cuts through three dimensions: power, desire, and destiny. You can see that Duke Huan of Qi, as the first overlord of the Spring and Autumn Period, was put under house arrest by his favorite treacherous officials Yi Ya and Zhu Diao in his later years, and starved to death. His body was left for sixty-seven days until "the zombies came out of the house." In the end, he could not escape the fate of starving to death; King Wu of Qin Yingdang was born with supernatural powers and liked to compete with others, but he accidentally let go of his hand when lifting a tripod in a competition with the strongman Meng Shuo, and his tibia was broken by the tripod.
Behind these seemingly absurd deaths, they reflect the cruel reality of the collapse of rituals and changes in power during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The work not only focuses on death itself, but also focuses on depicting the struggle of human nature at the peak of power, as well as the helplessness and impermanence of personal destiny in the torrent of history.
