Back then, her ancestors answered Emperor Han Xuan's policy of settling troops to farm. They cleared weeds and felled rotten trees, enduring hardship as they settled the land and reclaimed wasteland. With their own hardworking hands, they irrigated the desert, divided it into wells and fields, and harvested grain from the barren land to feed their descendants. They opened routes and developed trade roads, connecting eastward to the Silk Road in the Western Regions and making the Hexi lands prosperous. They trained horses on the grasslands, rode at full gallop, and hunted in the bitter cold of the vast northern sea...
The Yongjia upheaval was an unprecedented catastrophe. Taking advantage of the chaos of the coup in the Daxia court, the Jie people swept in en masse like a gale whipping up a sandstorm.
Their people's living space was seized bit by bit. Countless men were tied together in groups with ropes, then buried in pits or thrown into the Yellow River. Women were captured and made into servants, military prostitutes, or even food for the Hu people when they were hungry and lustful.
Her father and brothers were all slaughtered beneath the Jie people's scimitars, and her kinswomen were trampled beneath their horses' hooves.
