On the 17th day of the twelfth lunar month in the eighth year of Yong'an, the capital received the heaviest snowfall since the beginning of winter.
The young emperor Xiao Jinglan has been on the throne for five years. He works hard and sleeps day and night, but the world is becoming more and more chaotic - the northern border is in danger, the northwest bandits are raging, and the treasury is empty. He blamed all this on Pei Yun, the general of Zhenbei who held a heavy army. Under the trap of the treacherous minister Zhao Bingzhong, Pei Yun was beheaded for the crime of "collaboration with the enemy and treason."
Pei Yun did not complain. He knelt in the snow and never said a word to defend himself until his death.
One month after Pei Yun's death, his fiancée Shen Zhiwan held her fiancé's cold tombstone in her hands and walked out of the capital in the heavy snow. She was going to a place without Pei Yun, even if that place meant not having herself.
And the young emperor who ordered Pei Yun to be killed, sitting in the empty Nuan Pavilion of Qianning Palace, finally understood that he was not killing a traitor, but the last backbone of the dynasty.
This is a tragedy about power, loyalty and love. When the heavy snow covers all truths and grievances, the only things left in the snow are the bloodstains that refuse to be buried.
[Solemn explanation]
This book is an imaginary historical novel, created fictitiously in the name of "Five Years of Chongzhen". All characters and events are fictitious and do not allude to any real historical figures.
