Mountains and Rivers Cannot Cross

Xie Ke, courtesy name Yuheng, was born into the prestigious Xie clan, one of the great noble families. He was the most celebrated young gentleman in the city of Mojing.

He was strikingly handsome, with the grace of fine jade and an air of effortless nobility. Brilliant from childhood, he excelled in literature and also studied horsemanship, archery, and military strategy. Even as a boy, his talent and bearing were famous among the scholars and aristocrats.

By the age of twenty-three, he had risen to a high position and taken command of the military, becoming a young general renowned throughout Mojing.

His illustrious family, outstanding talent, astonishing looks, and the glory of early success seemed to suggest that fate had already given him everything the world had to offer.

Then an unexpected upheaval dragged him cruelly down from the clouds and into the dust.

The once-noble young gentleman began to see a world he had never truly noticed before. The once-proud young general was forced, through repeated losses and hardship, to reconsider power, war, human nature, and himself.

He saw the splendor of Mojing and the desolation of exile. He witnessed the mansions of the great families and experienced the warmth and cruelty of the world. Some reached out to him, some pushed him into the abyss, and some never gave up on him.

Fate drove him far from home and toward unfamiliar mountains and rivers, stripping away bit by bit the radiance of the once-proud, dazzling young man.

But some people, even after falling into the dust, still refuse to bow their heads.

Only after traveling thousands of miles across mountains and rivers did he finally understand:

The hardest thing to cross in a person's life has never been mountains and rivers.

It is their own fate.

Beyond the Mountains and Rivers is the story of a young general who falls from the heights, journeys across the land, and searches for a place to belong amid fate and deep affection.

Theme: Beyond the Mountains and Rivers is set in an imagined era and tells the story of a talented and handsome young general born into a prestigious noble family. As fate shifts and the land is thrown into turmoil, he suffers one loss after another and struggles to find himself again. The novel explores both family and country, as well as familial and romantic love. It portrays the smallness and helplessness of individuals under imperial power, while also showing one person's determination to defend their dignity, freedom, and right to choose their own path. Xie Ke once believed that life meant loyalty to his family, service to his country, and answering to the world. Only after enduring countless hardships did he gradually understand that one can carry the weight of family and country and shoulder one's responsibilities, but one's life ultimately belongs to oneself. Through a modern perspective on an age of rigid hierarchy and absolute imperial authority, the story seeks to understand the logic of history while reconsidering power, family status, loyalty, marriage, and sacrifice. It asks one simple question: When an era dictates how a person ought to live, do they still have the right to choose their own life? That is the answer Beyond the Mountains and Rivers hopes to leave behind.