The story is set in the seventeenth year of Yong'an in the Great Yan dynasty. The Northern Di cavalry have broken through Yanmen Pass, and the Central Plains are on the brink of disaster. Once-prosperous Great Yan is crumbling under internal and external pressures. With the Northern Di army bearing down on the capital, officials of the civil and military courts are either dead or fleeing, while the princes have abandoned both their father and their country, fleeing first of all. Only Shen Zhijie, a low-ranking Hanlin Academy compiler, faces the devastated court and proposes three strategies: the best, the middle, and the worst. The story turns when Li Tong, the ruler of a fallen dynasty, looks at the few family members he has left in the depths of despair, revealing the deeper human struggles behind the dynasty’s collapse and the uncertain road ahead.
