Young Master Li: Chronicles of the Martial Zhou Dynasty

The Young Master Li: Chronicles of the Wu Zhou Era

A dog-head gold nugget shaped like a toad from birth rolled all the way from a python's nest in Suiye into the Central Plains. The gold was real, but the inscription on its underside was a vulgar phrase: "The black-haired girl was here." Six characters carved into the belly of an auspicious treasure presented to the Empress Dowager, which no one among the court officials dared to wipe away.

In a Liangzhou winery, a man in a blue-gray robe who called himself "a book peddler" leafed through a damaged manuscript and got swept into this absurd affair. He was not tall, but broad-shouldered; the space at his waist had once held a short sword. South of Suiye, in a place even the maps refused to mark, a barefoot girl came chasing after him, lawless and still full of the foolishness the ways of the world had failed to grind away.

The golden toad recognized its master; a name lay hidden in the jade register. The Dali Temple's blades could not reach the wild girl, and the moon above the Mingtang could not shine into the dreams of those who lived in the mountains.

The Empress Dowager asked who had carved it. No one dared answer. The Dali Temple investigated for half a month and traced the matter to a "book peddler" in Liangzhou. He said, "My surname is Li." Then he put down his brush and closed the jade register, which listed every living and dead member of the Li Tang imperial clan.

He was no book peddler. She had not come to cause trouble. The gold was no auspicious treasure.

But by then, no one in Luoyang cared about any of that.

In the Wu Zhou era, mountain spirits entered the mortal world, the world changed, and the Li and Wu royal clans sought common ground amid their struggle for power.

By the author Baihelou Zhu