Yue Fei: From the Start, I Tore Up the Twelve Golden Orders

Twelve gold dispatches, delivered from Lin'an to Zhuxian Town in three days. Every one of them orders him to return and die. In the tenth year of Shaoxing, Yue Fei’s army wins a great victory at Zhuxian Town, crushing Jin Wuzhu’s forces and pointing its spears straight at Kaifeng. Then the twelfth gold dispatch arrives. No one knows that the moment Yue Fei receives it, his blood and qi surge, and he dies. The one who survives is Yue Ming, a history graduate student from nine hundred years in the future. He knows this history too well: Yue Fei returns to court, is stripped of his military command, thrown in prison, and unjustly executed at Fengbo Pavilion on trumped-up charges. But history can be rewritten. While the eunuch is still reading the imperial decree with an air of arrogance, Yue Ming tears the twelve gold dispatches in half in front of tens of thousands of soldiers. “Go back and tell Zhao Gou,” he says. “I tore up the twelve gold dispatches. I’m not returning from Zhuxian Town. I’m continuing the northern campaign.” From that moment on, history takes a turn no one could have imagined. He is Yue Ming, but he is not Yue Fei. He inherits Yue Fei’s martial skills and memories, but he doesn’t have to follow Yue Fei’s path. He knows the fractures within the Jin kingdom, the Khitan refugees’ desire to restore their homeland, and the right formula for gunpowder. If a loyal minister can only kneel and die, then he’ll be a “rebel” who lives on his feet. At Dengzhou, eight thousand battered soldiers hold their ground for ten days. At Xiangyang, fifty thousand soldiers fight for twenty days without yielding an inch. In pursuit along the Tang River, the Yue family army chases the Jin forces, driving Jin Wuzhu into a rout. When the court cuts off supplies, he farms to feed his troops. When provisions run out, he reforms commercial taxes. When he’s surrounded on all sides, he contacts the Khitans and forms a mutual alliance.