Looking North in the Middle of the Stream

After Yongjia, the land of Shenzhou fell. In the north, the Hu and Han Dynasties are mixed, and all the countries are rising together; on the left side of the river, there is peace, and the pure talk is disturbing the country. More than twenty years after Zu Ti's Northern Expedition, a young man named Zu Heng set out from Jianghuaiwu Fort and took his ancestral family's old genealogy with him to the north again. He had seen the ashes of Yecheng after the fall of Ran Wei, had seen Murong Ke's rule over Yan, and Wang Meng's rule over Qin, and had also seen Huan Wen's ambition in the Northern Expedition and the embarrassment of Fangtou's defeat. He had been used by the former Yan, suspected by the former Qin, and abandoned by the Eastern Jin. He had always wandered among the three strongest powers in the world. He could save a fortress, a partial army, and a group of refugees, but he could not save a dynasty. He could change the fate of a few people, but he could not change the general trend of history. When Fu Jian went south, the decisive battle at Fei River, and everyone was fighting for the world, Zu Heng finally understood: The Central Plains has never been a map. It is about the etiquette, names and way back that a group of people are still willing to preserve in troubled times. This is a story about the Northern Expedition, troubled times, ideals and survival.