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A Storm Gathers Over the Mountains
In the thirteenth year of Yuanqi under the Great Jing, troubles at home and abroad arrive one after another. On the northern frontier, the Hu cavalry are poised to strike, having already broken through three passes and advanced toward Yanmen. In the south, torrential rains bring disaster, leaving the land strewn with corpses as famine refugees rise up everywhere. At court, undercurrents surge: old aristocratic houses and veteran clans join forces to seize power, while rising talents from humble families begin to make their mark. Factional divisions deepen by the day, and the princes’ struggle for the throne has long been simmering, ready to erupt. Shen Yanzhi, a young imperial censor born to a humble family, enters government through his talent. He comes to court with an earnest desire to cleanse officialdom and protect the realm, only to stumble upon the secret of the late emperor’s edict. His own origins, too, are inextricably tangled in the mysteries of the court. Xiao Jingyuan, the empire’s guardian general, has defended the northern frontier with iron resolve for ten years. His military victories command respect across the land, yet when the fighting on the frontier intensifies, he receives an urgent summons back to the capital and discovers that the silent power struggles in Shengjing are far more treacherous and unpredictable than any battlefield. The imperial consort rules from behind the curtain, powerful ministers form factions and abuse their power, and foreign enemies eye the borders hungrily. Every force harbors its own agenda. The wind is raging through the halls, and the storm is about to break. No one can stay out of it. Shen Yanzhi and Xiao Jingyuan, one a scholar and the other a warrior, at once rivals and friends, struggle to choose between the contest for imperial power and their duty to the realm. With their convictions as their pieces and their lives as their stakes, they fight to hold up the crumbling Great Jing amid the raging chaos.
