Wolf Smoke on the Western Frontier

O sacred, bountiful Erbin Mountains! You are the land the bandits covet. Beneath every peak lies the battlefield where I fought to the death. Slaying the marauders and protecting my mother and the girl in my heart, I have been granted wondrous strength by the Eternal Heaven. If enemy bullets pierce my chest, bury me on a high ridge! My body will become another mountain range, and my heartbeat will forever thunder across the grasslands! ... At the beginning of 1867, the sixth year of the Tongzhi reign of the Qing Dynasty, the Xarga sum of the Torghut Mongols, grazing deep in the Tianshan Mountains of Xinjiang, was suddenly attacked by a mysterious force. Dozens of able-bodied local militiamen, including Zuling Sangeji, were brutally killed. Only the cavalry officer Ashan Kundu managed to escape by sheer luck... Upon hearing the news, the tribal khan immediately sent Bater and a cavalry unit into the mountains to investigate the enemy's movements. He then personally led the main force into battle, matching wits with the advance unit of Yaqub's well-equipped invading army and ultimately wiping out the enemy... Three months later, tens of thousands of Yaqub's main forces advanced on the region. The khan, the khatun, cavalry commander Bater, chief steward Zhabu Taiji, the great lama Mucheng, the leaders of each banner, and the other commanders led their tribe's cavalry, herders, and lamas. Joined by the Khoshut Mongols and the Urumqi Southern Mountains militia, people from many ethnic groups fought wave after wave across the vast land at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains, in a breathtaking struggle against the invaders that lasted ten years...