Huo Pingyi is an unfavored prince.
His mother, a daughter of a military family confined deep within the palace, poured her former lofty ambitions into the two characters of his name, Pingyi. But she could not bear to make Huo Pingyi suffer the bitter intrigues required to pursue those ambitions. From childhood, he was dressed as a girl, kept away from the deceit and treachery of the court and the inner palace, and lived with his mother in the most inconspicuous corner of the rear palace.
An imperial edict sent the palace's most inconspicuous "Princess Pingyi" thousands of miles away to the grasslands for a political marriage.
On their wedding night, the khan of the grasslands held his chin and asked him, "Pingyi? Does the Yi in your name mean barbarians?"
His husband, E Le, was kindhearted but not weak. He was proud, yet never stubborn or self-righteous. Huo Pingyi felt that this husband in name was more deserving of being called the people's sun than his own father, who merely wore an emperor's robes.
But that rising sun went out at the height of its brilliance.
Before E Le died, he fulfilled his promise to Huo Pingyi: he helped him reclaim his identity as a man, and Huo Pingyi became a teacher in a small border town.
This was the first border town trampled by the grassland cavalry. On the first day the new khan took the city, he caught Huo Pingyi hiding among the crowd and looked down at him from on high with contempt.
"I heard there's a man in this city whose name is just like my sister-in-law's, and whose looks are seven or eight tenths like hers, too..."
"Is that you? Look up."
Huo Pingyi didn't dare look up at the arrogant young khan.
Because he really was the sister-in-law this new king spoke of, and after his elder brother's death, he should have become the khan's new wife.
A story about the gong and a pair of brothers, with the younger brother as the true gong.
Theme: For the sake of freedom, anything can be cast aside
