During the Great Ming Dynasty, there was an unknown border town outside the Bitter Cold Wall. There were only a few hundred households, but there was a huge family that had been here for generations.
The ancestral precepts of this clan are strict: they only marry wives, not daughters, and rely solely on marriage to strengthen their bloodline. They focus on farming and studying for generations, and practice martial arts to protect the hometown. The men farm the fields, do business, and study to become officials. The women manage the household and are familiar with military equipment. They use hundreds of years of manpower to transform the barbaric frontier and build the barren land into a fortress city-state with abundant warehouses, exquisite craftsmanship, and extended cultural heritage. It is like a paradise in troubled times.
However, the town's richness eventually attracted the covetousness of nomadic foreigners outside the Great Wall. These tribes grew up chasing water and grass, and were indifferent to food storage and clumsy in skills. When the mountains were blocked by heavy snow in the winter, the whole tribe would go south to plunder, trying to seize the small town's grain, ironware, tea, salt, and exquisite utensils. The tribesmen in the small town then built a wall more than ten feet high and laid an iron fence to surround the town. There were wars every year in the cold winter.
What's even more dangerous is that every winter, the able-bodied men of the clan will go south to the big city to do business and make profits. The town's defenses are suddenly empty, and foreign clans will choose this time to invade.
This year, there was an extremely cold and heavy snowfall outside the Great Wall that had not been seen in a century. Mountains were closed, roads were cut off, and grain and grass harvests were cut off. Most of the able-bodied people in the town have already left for business, and a heavy snowstorm has blocked their way back, making it impossible to return within ten months. There were only old, weak, women, children, and young children left in the town. Although there was food in the warehouses, they were unable to withstand the tens of thousands of ferocious foreign cavalry who surrounded them from all sides.
The foreign tribes used the excuse of "God is unfair, the land is barren, and they have to live" to coerce many tribes to work together to encircle and suppress the town, in an attempt to wipe out the town in one fell swoop and plunder all existing supplies. In a desperate situation, a small town girl, together with her brothers, sisters, and clan members, took up arms and clung to the high wall to fight against the tiger and wolf masters with their meager strength.
Artillery fire and wind and snow intertwined, fighting and persistence accompanied each other. Even though the foreigners have brute force, they have no order, no skills, and no roots of unity; even though the small town tribesmen are old and weak, they have the character passed down from generation to generation, the resilience to transform the land and create fields, and the obsession to protect their homeland. They refuted the foreign bandit logic of "the weak and the strong" and exposed the excuse of "survival is justice" for aggression. They defended the fire of civilization with their flesh and blood, and defeated the invading enemies step by step.
On the day of the great victory, the tribesmen in the small town did not commit genocide. They only clung to their homeland and did not expand into the wilderness. This made the foreign tribes wake up in the defeat: what they lacked was never God's favor, but the original intention to cultivate the land and inherit civilization. Since then, foreigners have surrendered and paid tribute, learned to store grain, farm and weave, and acquired order and rules, but the town still stands outside the wall.
When the spring snow melts, the strong men who have traveled far away will return home through the melting snow, the warm sun breaks through the clouds, the cold winter is gone, and spring returns to the earth. This small town carrying the spirit of civilization is still on the border outside the Great Wall, passing on the fire from generation to generation.
Purpose: The survival of civilization never relies on military conquest, but relies on perseverance passed down from generation to generation, continuous self-improvement creation, and tolerance of all rivers; true strength lies in not losing character in desperate situations, not losing benevolence after victory, using one's own light to light up the dark nights of the wilderness, and letting the fire of civilization spread through the ages.