Wild Dogs of the Western Frontier

In the thirteenth year of Daye, half the realm collapsed. Xue Ju raised an army at Jincheng in the fourth month, Li Gui rebelled from Wuwei in the seventh, and the Tiele cavalry trampled the trade routes. Dunhuang became an isolated city. Business continued inside its walls, while people were already being buried outside them. Wu You lived in that city. A former garrison soldier, he carried a crossbow and a blade, and people called him “Mad Dog of the Great Desert.” Anyone who dared threaten the route he guarded could expect him to chase them three hundred li and hang their heads from the city gate. But he wasn't mad. He understood better than anyone that in times of chaos, trusting the wrong person could kill you faster than a knife. Kang Qingque, daughter of Dunhuang's Sabo, was the first to see who he really was. She called him “the scales”: when people's hearts were all crooked, someone had to stand straight and weigh who was human and who was a monster. Over the next twenty years, from Dunhuang to Chang'an, from Daye to Zhenguan, he killed, knelt, was sold out, and sold others out. Seven times he rose from the ashes, and every downfall was caused by trust. Yet it was trust that also let him pull one living person after another out of heaps of corpses. A stray dog doesn't recognize a home. It recognizes people. Once it chooses you, it stays for life.