In the first year of the Jingkang era, beneath the walls of Bianjing, the clash of armies shatters the setting sun.
When he awakens, he hears the trembling voices of the peace faction. Before him stands a swaggering Jin envoy, and behind him half the empire is on the verge of collapse. He is Lin Mo, a graduate student in history, but now he has become Emperor Qinzong of Song, the cowardly ruler blamed in the history books for ruining his country.
“Cede land? Pay reparations? Become their vassal?”
The ministers bow their heads. None dares to answer.
Lin Mo runs his hand over the yellowed ancient scroll that has appeared from nowhere on his desk: the Heavenly Tome of Generals' Souls. The instant his fingertip touches it, golden light soars skyward. A young spirit, the words “Serve the Country with Utmost Loyalty” on his back, steps from the scroll and kneels on one knee, his voice ringing like metal on stone:
“Yue Fei is ready to fight to the death for Your Majesty!”
From this moment on, history will no longer be a footnote of humiliation.
Amid the flames engulfing Bianjing, the young Yue Fei first reveals his brilliance. Snow piles high on bows and blades, while Di Qing's mask gleams coldly beneath the moon. Beyond Yanmen Pass, the white-haired old commander Yang looks back, with a million heroic spirits of the Yang family arrayed behind him, ready to fight.
When the banners of the Yue Family Army rise above Youzhou, when the Song cavalry tramples the snowbound lands of Huanglongfu, and when the backbone of China stands tall again after a century of humiliation, the court historian lifts his brush, then hesitates before putting ink to paper.
Who, exactly, was the emperor named Zhao Huan in the history books?
No one knows the answer. But in Bianjing's oldest library, someone secretly slips an anonymous unofficial history into a narrow gap between the shelves. On its title page is a single line in hurried handwriting:
“I am Lin Mo, and I am Zhao Huan. I came from nine hundred years in the future, only to tell this age: The Han people's robes and headwear will never again be carried off to the north.”
