North of Yanyun: Boshuo

A grassland epic about choices, costs and the fetal movement of empire. In the tenth century, the Tang Dynasty collapsed, and the south of the Great Wall fell into endless weapons and murder. In the cold Shuo Desert in the north, history is quietly turning - a tribal alliance named "Khitan" is about to make a choice that will change the pattern of East Asia for thousands of years. This book is the first book in the series, "Boshuo", which means "rise" and "dragon's rise". What it tells is not the "Yidi and Di chaos" in the eyes of the Han people, but the glorious struggle of a nation's self-determination: A man wants to break the ancestral system of eight alternations and transform from Khan to Emperor. A woman must keep the foundation of the empire between her husband's dream and the blood of her son. A son, carrying the bow and horse of the grassland and his father's legacy, rushes towards the bright and deadly southern dream. From Yelu Abaoji who unified the Khitan and founded the country in blood and fire, to Yelu Deguang who led an overwhelming army to seize Bianliang, but tasted the bitterness and disillusionment of cultural alienation in the heart of China; to the iron-fisted Shulu Ping, who used the pain of a broken wrist to steady the rudder in the turmoil... In the past eighty years, the Khitan has experienced the most typical desires, attempts and traumas in the youth of any empire. They gained the Yanyun Sixteenth Prefecture and the title of "Northern Dynasty", but they also forever lost the freedom and purity of being a simple grassland tribe. They stood on the Great Wall, looking to the south at the indigestible yet alluring farming galaxy, and to the north at the nomadic past that haunted them but could never be returned to.