During the Yongjia era of the Western Jin dynasty, powerful clans schemed against one another as the threat of barbarian invasions grew. Zheng Wu, a renowned scholar from the second-tier Yingchuan Zheng clan, had once been envied for his talent. His close friend Wang Yan, a son of the Langya Wang clan; his seemingly gentle fiancée Xie Yun, who was secretly a hidden agent of the Taiyuan Wang clan; and Shi Le, a ruthless upstart from a humble background who coveted the Zheng family's ancestral River Luo Weiqi Manual, joined forces to frame him. Zheng Wu was ruined, his family destroyed, and he died at the execution grounds with his heart full of hate. When he opened his eyes, he had been reborn in the spring of the first year of Yongjia, before any of those tragedies had come to pass.
