Mountain and River Brush

[Chronological Blurb]

In the fifteenth year of the Mingyu era, Qi Xiao died. The prince was released into the forest, and the high-and-mighty Princess Kangning strayed into a haunted village, where she met a young man with a cloth skirt tied around his waist.

The young man had bright, handsome features. Smiling warmly, he handed her a bowl of plain rice porridge.

From her defeat at Yanmen, to the northern campaign in Zhenzhou, to her troops reaching the walls of Yongdu, that bowl of porridge was always at her side.

[Reverse-Chronological Blurb]

During the Hongde era of the Great Kang dynasty, there was once a tyrant empress.

She usurped the throne, executed upright officials, destroyed the Ten Directions City, and waged war without restraint. She melted a hundred million weapons to cast a statue of Guanyin, and drove the barbarians six thousand li away beneath a sea of white robes.

Then a proclamation denouncing the Qi dynasty appeared out of nowhere. Loyal ministers and renowned scholars within the government took up arms, rallied behind a new emperor, overthrew the tyrant, and restored order and justice.

Overnight, 9,900 Guanyin statues were toppled. Only beside a pond outside the deserted Fangcun Mountain did a crooked clay Bodhisattva remain.

Buffeted by wind and frost, scorched by the sun and soaked by rain, its features had blurred, but it still vaguely resembled Guanyin.

Ten years earlier, a young man and woman had passed by this place. Pointing casually at the summer lotus flowers in the pond, the young woman said, “Look at all the lotuses in this pond, rising unstained from the mire.”

“Mm-hmm.” The young man propped his chin in his hand, gazing at the beautiful young woman beside him. He liked listening to her say such flowery things. “So you're the lotus, right?”

The young woman glanced sidelong at him. “I'm the mire.”

To stay unstained by the filth, how could one write of ten thousand li? To keep from getting a speck of black on oneself, how could one paint a kingdom?

Her usually composed, cool eyes took on a rare trace of melancholy. But the young man looked at the patch of black mud beside the pond and said, “The mire is good.”

“The mire protects the flowers even better, and you can make Bodhisattvas out of it, too.”

------Reading Guide------

1. Characters: A tsundere princess with a genius-level intellect, no martial skills, and zero practical life experience x a sweet young man who is unbeatable in a fight and an excellent cook

2. An ensemble of young characters and a tyrant in a chaotic era. Later on, the heroine has her own political ideals and will not change for anyone.

3. The story is told chronologically; the blurb is in reverse order. Part One: winning back allies in the martial world. Part Two: building a nation at court. HE.

4. Long novel.

5. A completed novel in the same category by the author: Guanshan Nan Yue, featuring a reserved general's daughter x an affectionate, possessive hostage prince skilled in political scheming

Theme: Recognize danger, do not retreat, and embrace change