Lan Ao took someone else's place in corvee service. A frail scholar, he entered the military camp unable to lift or carry anything, and endured the scorn of everyone around him.
Everyone: With that fair, delicate face, could he actually be a girl? Did he join the army in his father's place?
Lan Ao said nothing and took off his clothes to prove he was a man.
Everyone: ...
On inspection duty, Mo Huaizeng heard the commotion and pulled open the tent flap, thinking the new recruits were causing trouble. He came face-to-face with Lan Ao, whose robes were wide open.
Mo Huaizeng: If you're not going to sleep, go run ten laps.
The recruits fell silent, scrambled into their beds, and pretended to sleep.
In the dim lamplight, no one noticed General Mo secretly wiping his nose.
To Lan Ao, Mo Huaizeng was a ray of light in the dull life of guarding the frontier. He taught him how to fight, how to march and arrange troops, and how to get along with his brothers... Everything Lan Ao came to know, Mo Huaizeng taught him.
There was only one thing Lan Ao learned on his own: how to love him.
Mo Huaizeng considered himself an upright, ordinary man. Though he dreamed of great things, he was bound by the rules of ruler and subject. As the world fell into ever greater turmoil, loyalty to the emperor was what he wanted, but the price would be the tens of thousands of brothers at his back, as well as the little scholar who followed him around like a persistent plaster.
He held back. If the old realm was beyond saving, then he would fight to carve out a new one.
Steady, reserved general & gentle on the outside, strong-willed on the inside scholar
Premise: In the darkness, a light shines through
So Lai Henan is the deputy CP