When the Wind Rises Beyond the Pass

Two old locust trees stand in Yongzhou, shedding snowlike blossoms each spring.

Chu Yan retrieves a wooden box from an abandoned house in Yunzhou. Inside is the Yunzhou seal, the only key to opening the outer layer of the Ice Tomb’s seal.

The distinctive pattern on its copper lock brings to light long-buried secrets spanning three dynasties, all tied to those who guarded the seal. The emperor in Luojing covets the seal’s power to strengthen his rule. Xie Xuan of the Demon Suppression Bureau owes an old life debt and is forced to travel through the provinces, seizing their seals. Lured by promises of profit, the Gule tribes beyond the pass send their cavalry south, hoping to surround Yongzhou from within and without.

Members of the neutral Jiusi Hall hide among the streets, abiding by their rule to preserve the order of the seal and favor neither side. They only secretly pass along some hemp cloth and old coins marked with grooves, hinting at a game of fate that cannot be reversed.

He Qing divines the future three times, and every word of the readings is grim: “The journey home is safe. The trouble lies at the city’s edge. The greater crisis is beyond it.”

He says that a reading can still be changed by human intervention, but the greed rooted in people’s hearts can never be washed away.

Five people stand together to defend a lonely city:

Chu Yan shoulders his fate alone, traveling back and forth between Yunzhou and Yuezhou, taking the disasters of the world upon himself;

He Qing uses up his talismanic power and shortens his own life to raise a maze-like barrier around the city, protecting countless civilians;

Zhou Heng bears old wounds from the bloody battle in Misty Valley, guarding the city walls day and night and using his body to hold back blades and weapons;

Ye Wuyou uses his innate, extraordinary hearing to discern the movements of a thousand troops through the sound of his flute, while his pure heart slowly wears away in the chaos of war;

Liu Xi, heir to the branch responsible for supporting the seal’s guardians, stays among the ordinary bustle of daily life, preparing every possible escape route, yet unable to keep those who fight alongside her from leaving.

An imperial decree brands all of Yongzhou as rebel territory. The horns beyond the pass draw nearer with each passing day, and the fighting gradually spills into the streets.

From the very beginning, they know that all their desperate efforts to hold the line will be in vain.

The seal can confine the foul energy beneath the earth, but it cannot contain the lust for power and hatred that breed from one generation to the next. Young people can stop one war before them, but they cannot break the endless cycle of a war-torn age.

After the great battle at the Ice Tomb ends, the flames of war die down and the land is warmed by spring once more. The locust blossoms still cover the stone-paved streets every year.

But the five people who once stood shoulder to shoulder beneath the locust trees, defending the city together, have long since scattered to the four winds. They will never reunite.

The world enjoys peaceful days and warm hearths year after year. Only those who defended the city have gone their separate ways, never to meet again for the rest of their lives.

[Tags] Historical Fantasy Ensemble | Fated Tragedy | Political Intrigue and Wuxia | Secrets of the Seal | Every Character’s Story Is Heartbreaking | Slow Burn and Subtlety

Theme: A Yunzhou seal that controls the Ice Tomb’s seal throws the Central Plains and the lands beyond the pass into turmoil. Chu Yan and four others are bound by fate to guard the seal, trapped in the lonely city of Yongzhou. They know fate favors chaos and tragedy lies ahead, yet they still use their mortal flesh and blood to oppose the emperor’s lust for power, the forces of the Demon Suppression Bureau, and the cavalry beyond the pass. They give their all to protect the innocent civilians in the city and, with their own strength, stand against the war and catastrophe sweeping across the land.