The Legend of Chai Rong

The wars of the Five Dynasties swept across the Central Plains, carpeting the land with bones. Later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin, and Later Han took turns occupying the imperial throne, while the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun had long since been handed over to the Khitan iron hooves. Across a thousand miles of barren fields, the people couldn't even get a single peaceful meal.

In his youth, Chai Rong traveled far and wide pushing a tea cart. Step by step, he rose from an officer in the imperial guard at Yedu, crossing blood and fire to inherit the Later Zhou realm left behind by Guo Wei. At Gaoping, he led from the front and routed the Northern Han coalition. He reclaimed the four Qin and Feng prefectures in the west, then swept through fourteen prefectures in Huainan in the south, forcing the ruler of Southern Tang to abandon his imperial title and submit. He restored military discipline, lightened taxes and labor duties, and revised the court music. To Wang Pu, he pledged: "Ten years to expand the realm, ten years to nourish the people, and ten years to bring peace." Even the Khitans saw his riding crop before Wa Qiao Pass.

But in the year he turned thirty-nine, a sudden and severe illness struck his camp during the northern campaign against Youzhou, leaving his six years of grand ambition forever adrift in the winds of the Five Dynasties turmoil. Later generations remember only the yellow robe placed on Zhao Kuangyin at Chenqiao Station, but few look back at the emperor who, with five more years, might have completed the unification of the realm, as the sun set beyond the Hall of Meritorious Officials.

Based on true historical events, this book invites you to transmigrate through a thousand years of dust and retrace Chai Rong's journey from a tea-selling youth to a great ruler of his age.