Sixteen-year-old Lin Qingyi left her jade hairpin at the Shangyuan Lantern Festival and exchanged it for Shen Yan's jade bamboo flute. She didn't know that it contained a map of the Jin soldiers' invasion of the south. When the city of Jinan was destroyed and her father died in battle, she swallowed the bloody jade instrument and jumped into the glacier; when Bianjing fell and the Second Emperor hunted north, she embarked on the journey to the south carrying half a piece of charred wood and the blood-stained "green, fat, red and thin". For forty years, from Daming Lake to West Lake, she used her words as a boat to carry the Chinese cultural context through the war.
This is no ordinary historical novel. Here, begonias grow from stove ashes, poems are made into armor, and incense seals mark time. While men guard the mountains and rivers with swords, Lin Qingyi uses the unique tenacity of women to build another Great Wall with her heart.
[Why do readers stay up all night?
★ Immersive aesthetics of the Song Dynasty: gulls and herons emerge from the tea foam, and paper boats carry poetic hearts, taking you to experience the most poetic China
★ Unforgettable love: In the sea of fire, he smiled blood-stained: "When the jade flute is found, I will offer you Begonia as a betrothal." She stuffed it into the burnt wood: "Living is more precious than gold and stone."
★ A woman's spiritual epic: from the age of sixteen to sixty, using ashes to cultivate hope and letting words repel swords
In 2024, the Palace Museum restorer discovered a blood letter among the fragments of the Southern Song Dynasty: "Tell the gulls and herons in the Xiting Pavilion for me that they live in my words." A thousand years of time were pierced in an instant.
Open this book and let Lin Qingyi tell you: When the mountains and rivers are broken, how can we use the words in our hearts to rebuild a world worth living in. This is not the dust of history, but a beacon that illuminates the present - in the darkest times, there are always people guarding the fire of civilization.
