The Wei Clan's Long Wind

What Xu Shuo's mother left him was an old testimony she refused to recant. When he came of age, he joined a military grain transport convoy with a copy of that testimony in hand, using his literacy and skill as a scribe to find himself a new path.

Wei Qing led campaigns beyond the frontier, Huo Qubing was made a marquis. The winds blew far and wide, and glory was at its height. Yet in the returning saddles, the missing names, and the families waiting at home, Xu Shuo saw the lives left untold behind the victories.

As the years passed, renowned generals fell and doubts began to cloud Chang'an. When suspicion entered the imperial chambers and kinship became a crime, even the great houses that had once sheltered so many found themselves battered by the storm.

He still wanted to leave a way home for those who lived, and a name for those who never returned.

Theme: Respect the lives and contributions of the nameless, and hold fast to conscience, family ties, and a sense of responsibility amid the rise and fall of an era.