In the sixth year of Yuanshou, General Huo Qubing passed away at the age of twenty-three.
Chang'an is a hundred miles of plains, and the armored army displays official roads. Emperor Wu buried him beside Maoling, and the tomb was built in the shape of Qilian Mountain. Seven years later, Emperor Wu took Huo Qubing's only youngest son to the top of Mount Tai and told the child at sunrise: Half of this country was conquered by your father.
The story starts from the moment Huo Qubing was born - he was born on the day Emperor Wu ascended the throne. His mother was a singer in Princess Pingyang's palace, and his uncle was Wei Qing, who was born as a slave. At the age of six, he was brought back to the palace by Emperor Wu. At the age of seventeen, he led 800 cavalrymen deep into Mobei. At the age of nineteen, he opened up the Hexi Corridor. At the age of twenty-one, he was granted the title of Xu. At the age of twenty-three, he died suddenly.
In just six years, he attacked the Xiongnu six times, beheaded 110,000 people, and planted the flag of the Han Dynasty to the end of the grassland. But when he returned to the court in triumph, what awaited him was not the peace of disarming and returning to his fields, but a chess game in the name of "high achievement and mastery". The weapons case of the Five States, the dispute over the appointment of the crown prince, the shooting of Li Gan in Shanglinyuan... When he finally understood the unfathomable chill in the emperor's eyes, there was not much time left for him.
This is a book about generals and emperors. About how a young man burned his whole life on horseback, about the wife behind him waiting for someone who will never come back in the depths of the peach forest, about Emperor Liu Che spending more than forty years to miss a person who he personally pushed to a dead end.
All achievements will fade, and all territories will change hands. The peach blossoms in the peach grove bloom every year, and when the petals fall on the stream and flow eastward, it seems as if the person has just passed by on horseback.
