In the autumn of Tianbao's fourteenth year, at the Zheng family's residence in Xingyang, the ginkgo trees were beginning to turn yellow.
I was born here, but I carry with me memories that do not belong to this era. I know that the Five Surnames and Seven Hopes will fly into the sky in the Tang Dynasty, and I also know that in a hundred years these Xuanhe clans will turn into dust with the blade of Huang Chao. I even know that my childhood sweetheart, the maid Jia Ling - the only woman I have ever loved in my life - will eventually waste her life because of my ambition.
At the age of fifteen, I said to her: "Wait for me." At the age of twenty, I married the legitimate daughter of Fan Yanglu's family. That tigress brought three hundred craftsmen and three thousand steps into the Zheng family, and also brought her calculations and ruthlessness. In the next eighty-five years, she and I would work together to eradicate the Cui family, disintegrate the Wang family, annex the Li family, and crush the five surnames and seven families one by one. I had children with her, I shared her bed with her, I embraced her at the peak of her power, and I fought with her at the last moment.
And Jia Ling always stood three feet behind me and never married.
When the Tang Dynasty finally fell before my eyes, I understood: The dragon slayer will eventually become the evil dragon, and the only thing I let down in my life was the hand I dared not hold under the ginkgo tree that autumn.
