In the winter of the twenty-third year of Yanxi, the Seventh Prince, Xiao Yi, lost his mother to illness. A solitary lamp burned before her coffin, and no one came to pay their respects. The Second Prince, Xiao Jue, seized on an excuse to torment him, ordering him to kneel in the snow outside the palace gates for three hours. He collapsed on the steps. By imperial decree, he was made Prince of Jing and sent to take up his post in the Western Desert that very day, a bitterly cold, desolate place where the wind could send stones flying.
There was no procession and no escort, only ten old and wounded soldiers and three carts of battered luggage. They were ambushed on the road, and only three people survived the journey. The so-called prince's residence was nothing but an abandoned earthen fort, its roof full of holes. The population was fewer than a hundred households, and the stores held only enough grain for half a month.
Everyone thought this exiled prince was finished for good.
But Xiao Yi refused to accept his fate.
He pawned his mother's keepsakes to buy seeds, led his people to dig deep wells for sweet water, and took in refugees from the Central Plains to reclaim the land. When five thousand barbarian cavalry came to his gates, all he had were three hundred farmers who could barely hold a blade.
No reinforcements. No way out.
Then he would fight. Fight his way to the impossible. Fight his way to becoming a new king risen from the wasteland.
This is a story of patience, strategy, and turning the tables. You trampled me into the mud in the capital; I put down roots and sprouted in the Western Desert. One day, the sandstorms will knock at your city gates for me.
