No Heroes in the Two Jin Dynasties

Standing before you is Pei Zhao, ruler of the Jin Empire and the sternest father among the great aristocratic clans.

The Three Kingdoms exhausted the age of heroes; the Two Jins were an age of vermin.

The Disaster of Yongjia laid the Central Plains to waste.

Who could be called a hero?

In the third year of Tai Xing, the Prince of Langya ascended the throne in Jiankang with popular support. Three years had passed since he inherited the throne. This was the Eastern Jin.

Heroes had reached their dead ends, and vermin ran rampant.

Pei Zhao, who had stepped in dog excrement on his way out, transmigrated into this hellish age, where one could neither live nor die.

With no other choice, he borrowed the name of the Hedong Pei clan, rose to prominence among the refugees, and maneuvered through the halls of power.

The great aristocratic clans languished in the south, drinking and dreaming their lives away, with no thought of reclaiming the Central Plains.

The northern Hu tribes trampled the people beneath their iron hooves, leaving heaps of bones piled like hills.

How could he bear to see the tears of a suffering people, staining the crabapple blossoms in the marquis's manor?

"Someone has to stand up. If so, why can't it be me?"

He had once shared wine beneath the moon with two companions.

He had once sipped clear tea as a fresh breeze stirred at his sides.

With a gentle wave of his feather fan, he could shatter an army in an instant.

He laughed amid moonlight and beauty, and toppled a mighty edifice in a moment.

He rode through the snow for a thousand miles to slay the enemy general, and crossed ten thousand miles of frost to perform the Hu reed-pipe music.

A cup of wine at the mountain pass: whose home would the lamplight illuminate?

The opening of Volume One of the Book of Liang reads: "Emperor Gao, the Great Ancestor, whose personal name was Zhao, was from Wenxi County in Hedong. From a young age, he had great ambitions..."

It all began when Pei Zhao helped a woman give birth...

"Her slender waist swayed like a beauty from the Chu Palace; spring had come, and her jade-like beauty and fragrant charm had waned."