Great Song: After Twenty Years Guarding the Pavilion, I Emerge to Lead the Northern Expedition

With the Southern Song clinging to its corner of the realm, Xin Qiji returns south from the Jin and is met with suspicion. At the outset, he is demoted to caretaker of the library. There, stuck in this dead-end post, he awakens a “strategic military simulation” golden finger, turning the military texts filling the shelves into a practical battlefield in his mind. Over the next twenty years, he appears absorbed in poetry and is impeached thirteen times. In truth, he uses every reassignment, moving through nine different regions, to refine his real-world defense plans.

Meanwhile, his wife, Fan Ruyu, travels through the martial world and the court disguised as a male student at an academy. In secret, she rallies the power of the Fan clan and weaves a vast network of logistical support and public opinion for him.

When the Jin army breaks the peace treaty and the court’s peace faction collapses, Xin Qiji stops hiding his abilities. He presents his Ten Discourses on Mei Qin and sets out on the northern expedition. One wields a sword to break through a million troops; the other wields a brush to bring peace to the realm. Together, the couple rewrite what was destined to be a tragic chapter in Southern Song history as a triumphant anthem of revival through blood and iron.