That Year, There Was No Snow in Hexi

In 138 BC, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty Liu Che secretly summoned Zhang Qian, the official of the Han Dynasty, and gave him a dual mission: to unite the Dayue clan to attack the Huns, and to weave an espionage network across the 26 countries in the Western Regions in the Hexi Corridor secretly. A delegation of more than a hundred people left the fortress, and the names of seven of them were forever erased from the annals of history - they were the "hidden stakes" buried in the Western Regions by the Han Dynasty. Their mission was to take root in foreign lands and wait for ten, twenty years, or even the call of the next generation. The envoy was captured as soon as he entered the Huns. Zhang Qian was taken to the royal court and met Zhong Xingshuo, an eunuch of the Han Dynasty who had defected to the Huns for fifty years - an opponent who understood the Han Dynasty better than the Huns. The Bank of China said that it would marry its adopted daughter Yun Luo to Zhang Qian, which was called a marriage, but it was actually surveillance. Yun Luo's mother was a married woman who died at the hands of the Xiongnu Chanyu; she was half-Han's blood, but she was abandoned by both sides. During her thirteen-year imprisonment, she went from being a chess piece ordered to monitor, to Zhang Qian's wife, mother of his children, and the last double agent laid out by the Bank of China. At the same time, there was a traitor hidden in the mission who was instigated to rebel, and behind the traitor was a more dangerous figure - Lu Sui, Zhang Qian's classmate at Taixue. Lu Sui's family was falsely accused and executed by Wang Hui, a powerful man of the Han Dynasty. His only purpose of seeking refuge with the Huns was to make both Han and Huns suffer losses. When the 300,000 Han troops in Mayi's plan were ambushing and waiting for the Huns' army, the Han counselors under the Huns' tent offered a strategy of "taking advantage of the enemy's tactics". And the spy list that Zhang Qian brought back from the Huns will become the only key to uncovering the truth of this war... That year, there was no snow in Hexi—the snow fell elsewhere, on those unknown tombs.