In the second year of Zhenyou, the Great Jin is on the brink of collapse.
Wanyan Shouxu, the Jin Empire's most formidable prince, harbors its deadliest secret: he is the grandson of Yang Zaixing, a famed general who fought against Jin, and the blood of the empire's sworn enemy runs through his veins.
With no other choice, he steps onto the crossroads of three paths:
One leads back to Lin'an, the homeland he can never return to.
One leads to the Jin throne, which he can never securely claim.
One leads to an unseen, winding road to peace.
As the son of the enemy, he must bring a century-old blood feud to an end. Yet history's answer is that, at the age of thirty-seven, he is trapped and left to die in the isolated city of Caizhou by the allied Mongol and Southern Song forces, alongside his two elder brothers.
This is a story of identity, political schemes, and ambition. When hatred between nations and vengeance within a family clash in one man, he must either become the hero who reconciles them all or a sacrificial offering torn apart by both sides.
He chooses a third path: on the ruins of a dynasty doomed to fall, he gives his life for a future that does not exist.
