Man Jiang Hong: Fury Sweeps Across Mount Helan

In the winter of the eleventh year of the Shaoxing reign, at the Dali Temple prison in Lin’an, the great general Yue Fei finishes writing his final poem beneath an oil lamp. Then he unexpectedly finds a faded jade tiger-head pendant hidden in the lining of the food box delivered by a jailer. It is the very pendant he gave to the person who saved his life twenty-two years earlier, back in his hometown of Xiangzhou. At midnight, a fire breaks out in the prison, and Yue Fei vanishes in the towering flames. When Qin Hui hears the news, he flies into a rage and issues twelve secret orders to hunt him down. Yet a rumor quietly spreads through the martial world: “Marshal Yue is not dead. He has reunited with his old troops in the Helan Mountains.”

In the first year of the Longxing reign, Emperor Xiaozong of Song clears Yue Fei’s name. The Yue Fei Temple rises beside West Lake, its incense never fading. On a drizzly Qingming day, a white-haired old man lingers in front of the temple, softly reciting, “Thirty years of fame, dust and dirt; eight thousand miles of road, clouds and moonlight...” A child asks who he is, but the old man only smiles and turns away, disappearing into the misty rain. The only one to notice is the temple keeper, who finds a yellowed military treatise on the offering table. On its first page are the words: “Restore our rivers and mountains. Respectfully offered by the Hermit of Helan Mountain.”