Facing North

Zhao Gou opened his eyes, and his mouth was still filled with the bitter taste of the bowl of medicine from Deoksugung Palace. He had just died a moment ago, eighty years of suffocation soaked in his stomach - he ran away for half his life, cowarded for half his life, paid tribute as a vassal, received twelve gold medals, Fengbo Pavilion, buried his head in the sand in Lin'an Warm Pavilion, and lived like a quail. He thought his life was over. When he opened his eyes again, he was lying back on the kang in the first year of Jingkang, twenty-five years old. The tent was made of burlap, with patches upon patches, and he knew it—the side room of the left-behind department in Xiangzhou. That year, he was stopped by Zongze and forced to wake up from the cold three times while covered with a thin quilt. When I stepped on the brick floor with my bare feet, a broken brick stung painfully. He didn't flinch and stood there without moving. The heat pavilion of Deoksugung Palace has been stepped on for twenty-five years, but nothing can be removed. A broken brick made him feel alive. I pushed the door open and walked into the snow, raised my head and took a sip. It was so cold that it froze from my throat to my chest. Winter of the first year of Jingkang. Before Bianjing fell, the Jin people had already crossed the Yellow River. His brother was waiting for a big disaster in the city, and his mother looked back on the carriage and shouted something he had never heard clearly in his life. There is still time for everything. Zhao Gou hung the sword back on his waist - it had been hung for more than fifty years, and the blade had not been stained with a drop of blood. He said to Zongze: I won't run away. There is no system, no cheats. Only a soul that had been suppressed for eighty years sat back down at the card table and pushed himself up from the coldest place. He was warming his hands by the brazier, squatting and eating cabbage dumplings, and thinking about a lame myna in the middle of the night - cold, warm, painful, and itchy, and picked them up one by one. Then he began to fight the lifelong battle. Open the first chapter. Zhao Gou is squatting in the snow in Xiangzhou, waiting for you.