Riding Beast

When Dugu Xin of the Western Wei Dynasty was forced to commit suicide, the fourteen-year-old seventh daughter Dugu Jialuo tasted the blood of power for the first time. At the age of seventeen, she married Yang Jian, a low-key and forbearing son of Guanlong, and vowed to have a son. This is not only love, but also a strategic alliance between two politically marginalized families. In the long decades that followed, Yu Wenhu was in power and Emperor Xuan of Zhou was tyrannical. The couple lived in the fear of precariousness, but they also weaved a network of family friendships throughout the government and the public through mutual support. Until Emperor Xuan died suddenly, Yang Jian faced the ultimate choice of "being a powerful official or usurping the throne". Dugu Jialuo only said seven words: "You must not get down from the power of riding a beast." One word settled the matter. When the Sui Dynasty was founded, the two sages ruled simultaneously. She helped her husband create a prosperous emperor, and also used iron-blooded means to cleanse the previous clan and take the lead in deposing and establishing the prince. However, when she stood on the top of power, she looked back at the way she came - the blood washed away, the allies sacrificed, and the old order buried by her own hands all turned into the same question: Can a person who rides a beast really come down? This is not a palace battle for favor, but a history of the formation of the Guanlong Group with marriage as the link. A woman's life is used to describe the entire process of a ruling group from the border town of Wuchuan to the center of the empire, and then on the back of the beast of power, step by step towards its fate.