At the end of the Great Xia Dynasty, the princes gathered their troops and respected themselves. In order to gain hegemony, Sima Long, the Marquis of Hui Jin, and Fan Zhongli, the Marquis of Tonggu, both wanted to control the 30,000 Mongolian cavalry living in the Central Plains. The leader of the cavalry, Tutuqi, insisted on maintaining neutrality, but was betrayed by his subordinates Huan Hegu and Minluo Zhui. Sima Long and Fan Zhongli thought they had controlled the cavalry and the opponent's internal agents respectively through coercion, and planned a strange plan in the decisive battle. Unexpectedly, the cavalry rebelled and became chaotic on the battlefield, causing the elites of both sides to be exhausted. Qi Maohui, Minister of the Ministry of War, and Wei Zheng, the emperor's consort, led the imperial army to appear at the right time and put down the two powerful vassals in one fell swoop. Tutuqi saw through the nature of the conspiracy, refused the reward from the court, and led those who were willing to follow sadly back north. This is a mantis-catching cicada-style feast of power, and it is also a profound torture of loyalty, ambition and survival.
Intent: Through a nested ancient game of power, the work explores the multiple dilemmas of individual choices under the whirlpool of power and pressure of survival. It reveals the sense of fate that the "controller" may also be the "chess piece" in a larger chess game, and uses the metaphor of prairie wolves to ask how the "backbone" of the soul should be placed in a world where compromise and domestication are inevitable. Ultimately it points to a desolate meditation on the cycle of history, the nature of human nature and the conflict between civilizations.