In the last years of Chongzhen, wars were everywhere and mountains and rivers were broken.
A heavy snowfall in Yanmen Pass set twenty-year-old Shen Yan on a journey of destiny. As the son of a border general, he had been accustomed to seeing the light of swords since he was a child, and guarded the Ming Dynasty's northern defense line with his flesh and blood. But the undercurrents in the court were turbulent, the eunuchs were disrupting the government, loyal ministers were being wronged, and his father's imprisonment forced him to be involved in the power whirlpool of the capital.
At the foot of Songjin City, 130,000 elite Ming troops fell into the sand. He fought bloody battles but could not save the defeat; in the lingering light of Meishan Mountain, Chongzhen hanged himself, and the Ming Dynasty overthrew. He became a prisoner but did not change his original intention. From the border guards to the ministers, from the turmoil in Beijing to the struggle against the Qing Dynasty in the south of the Yangtze River, Shen Yan's footsteps have traveled through the troubled times, witnessing the collapse of the dynasty and the displacement of the people.
The concern about the separation of father and son, the grief of Pao Ze's sacrifice, the perseverance of loyal ministers and righteous men, and the betrayal and struggle in the power field are all intertwined in the historical torrent of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. When his family and country were reduced to scorched earth, and when his faith encountered a desperate situation, he used his cold spear as his pen and his blood as his ink to write a magnificent song about loyalty, resistance and hope on the broken mountains and rivers.
This is a history of the ups and downs of a small man in a big era, and it is also a tragedy about family and country, faith and redemption in troubled times.
