In the twenty-seventh year of the Jinghe era under the Dayin dynasty, packs of wolves fled onto the imperial road, strange beasts reappeared in the mountains, and a dynasty that had endured for more than three hundred years reached the end of its golden age.
Seventeen-year-old Lu Zhao was merely a military herdsman who tended horses at Juma Post Station in Shuozhou. He thought his greatest wish in life was simply to eat his fill and protect his grandfather. But an unwanted scrawny horse and the beast-patterned bronze bell his mother left behind unexpectedly led him to the long-lost art of beast-taming once practiced by the Siyu.
From reading beasts’ hearts and taming strange creatures, to joining the border army, defending a lonely city, and leading iron cavalry; from a humble herdsman to a warlord in a chaotic age.
When flames of war spread across the Nine Provinces, great clans carved up the land, heroes rose on every side, and mythical beasts returned to the mortal world, Lu Zhao finally understood: the hardest thing to tame was never a ferocious beast, but this crumbling realm itself.
