When the Wind and Rain Came

On the desolate plains of Xizhou, where snow whips through the northern wind, the isolated city of Huizhou, held by the last remnants of the Jin, has become the final knot in the Mongol cavalry's southward advance. Zhao Dongzhou, an assistant commissioner in the Mongol Jingji Bureau, bears the dual identity of a Jin survivor and a Mongol official. As he looks upon the carnage inside and outside the city, memories of Zhongdu's fall twenty-one years earlier return, leaving him torn between loyalty and the lives of ordinary people. Guo Bin, the city's defender and renowned as the finest archer in Xizhou, leads his starving, freezing remnants in a desperate defense. He rejects the surrender letter from the Mongol marshal Anzhuer, determined only to preserve the last vestige of dignity for the Great Jin. Just as Anzhuer, delayed by the fighting and pressured by the Mongol court, resolves to launch a full assault, Shen Mi, the Xizhou pacification commissioner, arrives alone at the camp to oversee the troops, adding yet another uncertainty to the battle. In the bitter night, the campfires and the city's last flames face each other from afar. A desperate battle over the fate of the nation and the lives of its people is about to begin.