A long, long, long... time ago—

Chinese history, having reached the end of the Eastern Han, passed through the turbulent Three Kingdoms, and the short-lived Western Jin, began quietly, then shockingly, to slip into an abyss of near destruction.

Foreign invasions, the Jin imperial family's migration south, and the blood from ethnic massacres filled the long river of history.

The founding emperor of Later Zhao, Shi Le (of the Jie tribe), openly decreed that Hu people who plundered Han scholars would not be punished; if the Hu needed anything, they could take whatever they wanted from ordinary Han people. One can imagine the plight of the Han at that time.

An envoy from the Cheng state of Shu, sent to Later Zhao, recorded the horrors along the way: from Chang'an to Luoyang and then to Yecheng, the trees were hung with Han people who had hanged themselves, the city walls were lined with Han heads, and the bones of the dead were arranged as grisly warnings to terrify the living. The corpses of tens of thousands of resisting soldiers were abandoned in the wild to feed the beasts...

Bloody massacres and brutal ethnic oppression reduced the Han population in the north to six or seven million, leaving a landscape of scorched earth, and for the first time, the Han people stood on the brink of extinction.

History could not bear to watch the Han people sink further, and suddenly dozed off, so...

Chapter 1: Born in Troubled Times

The fifth year of Yonghe, autumn, during the reign of Emperor Mu of Jin. The setting sun was as red as blood.

South of Xiapi, the famous city of the Three Kingdoms, on the north bank of the Huai River, fat crows swayed contentedly on the branches, cawing, while greedy vultures, never satisfied, strutted with bulging bellies among the scattered corpses, brandishing their ominous long beaks.

How to describe the scene before one's eyes?

If Picasso were here, he would create another painting like "Guernica" to depict this unspeakable misery and brutality. Yet the devastation shown in "Guernica" after the German bombing is not even one percent of what lies before us.

Perhaps Delacroix's "The Massacre at Chios" could somewhat convey the horror of this earthly hell, but that massacre pales in comparison to the blood, terror, and despair revealed by this wasteland.

Across the wilderness, skeletal arms stretched upright toward the sky, as if their owners, even in death, were questioning the heavens—yet the heavens remained silent.

The ground was covered with corpses, forming a grotesque carpet that completely concealed the earth, shrouding the entire world. The soil beneath the bodies had turned a thick brown—that was blood, dried blood.

The heavens were silent; only countless dusky crows and black vultures gathered in the forest of withered arms, brazenly pecking at the last bits of flesh. Soon, these arms would, like countless others, become bare bones.

The river surged endlessly, day and night, its surface covered with floating corpses drifting downstream—they all wore Han attire, men and women alike, without exception bearing relaxed faces, with expressions of relief and faint smiles. Each had tied their hats meticulously; even in death by drowning, their sashes remained neat and new, as if they were not going to their deaths, but attending a grand feast.

Amid the gaps between the corpses, a few numb survivors sat scattered, each like the walking dead, their vacant eyes staring blankly ahead, oblivious to the crows and vultures pecking around them. Occasionally, a bold crow would even hop onto their bodies, pecking at the flesh on their cheeks, but they remained unaware.

Suddenly, several crows cawed and flapped their wings, taking flight. A survivor dressed as a scholar shakily stood up, silently straightened his hat, carefully arranged his sash, and muttered to himself as he walked toward the Huai River: "The royal army is gone. Rather than live as slaves, we should seek release in death—gentlemen, I will go ahead."

This act did not rouse the numb survivors; over the past days, they had grown used to seeing people seek death in the river. Perhaps, before long, they would follow suit.

The scholar staggered toward the riverbank, climbed the high embankment, and, like the surging river, waved his wide sleeves, singing a mournful song as if to vent all his resentment before dying.

By the embankment stood a sparse grove of small trees. For days, beneath the largest tree, a strange man had been sitting upright. No one knew where he had come from or when he had joined the refugees. His attire was nothing like that of the Jin people (at the time, all Han were called Jin people); he wore a short, arrow-sleeved jacket like the Hu, but not quite the same as the Jie style, and his clothes were adorned with shiny bronze buttons. On his feet were not wooden clogs, but a pair of knee-high leather boots, polished to a shine.

At that time, Jin people valued "the body and hair are received from one's parents and must not be lightly discarded," so even monks did not shave their heads. But this man had short hair, a style unseen anywhere in the Central Plains. Even stranger, he was accompanied by a sturdy Hu servant with a Xianbei-style shaved head and prominent features, who had respectfully stayed by his side for days, driving away the crows that landed nearby.