At that time, the Murong Xianbei forces were at their peak. Across the land of Liaodong, Murong cavalry roamed everywhere. After Shawn Irwin escaped from the captive ranks, she hid in various places, but could never escape the fate of being betrayed. In this way, they spent two years. With nowhere else to turn, Shawn Irwin remembered that the Yuwen tribe had intermarried with Goguryeo for generations, and that Goguryeo had long since retreated to Lelang Commandery (present-day Korean Peninsula), beyond the reach of the Murong Xianbei. Therefore, she continued to hide, hoping to seek refuge in Goguryeo.

Yingkou is now called "Lilin Kou," and was originally the territory of the Yuwen tribe, but had long since been completely destroyed by the Murong tribe. Shawn Irwin did not know the situation here. After enduring countless hardships to escape to this place, she planned to find some of her former tribesmen and, with their help, go to Goguryeo. Unfortunately, on the way she was discovered by a squad of Murong cavalry. Only through the desperate resistance of her guards did she manage to escape to the riverside.

Shawn Irwin was naturally strong-willed. When she saw Isaac Hall's boat on the river, she called out for his help. After repeatedly calling to no avail, she would rather throw herself into the water than be captured by the Murong Xianbei. When she was rescued and awakened on the boat, Shawn Irwin rebuked Isaac Hall for his offense against her, but unexpectedly, Isaac Hall's resolute act of kicking her into the water was exactly to Shawn Irwin's liking.

Women of the steppe admire men with strong character, especially when they are in difficult situations and need a tough man to help them. So she forcibly suppressed the anger of her subordinates and gave Isaac Hall the highest salute of the Xianbei people to a warrior, thanking Isaac Hall for saving her life.

"Where do you wish to go?"—the exiled Shawn Irwin finally asked this question. At this moment, Isaac Hall was also pondering this very question in his heart.

Chapter 4: Who Are You

The millet is lush, the grain is full. The journey is long and weary, my heart is choked with sorrow. Those who know me say my heart is troubled; those who do not know me ask what I seek. Vast and boundless heavens, who is this person?

Isaac Hall kept reciting these lines of poetry, wanting to cry but having no tears.

Vast and boundless heavens, who is this person?

Most of the Five Barbarians who entered the Central Plains were branches of the Han Chinese, except for the Jie Hu. These people had high noses and deep-set eyes, typical of Caucasians. Like other nomads, they had their own language but no written script, so they had to use Chinese characters for writing and record-keeping. At that time, the upper-class nobility of the Five Barbarians, though they despised the Han and treated them as the lowest slaves, were, deep down, greatly attracted to Chinese civilization. As a result, their children often regarded fluency in Chinese language and characters as a mark of status.

It was under these circumstances that Shawn Irwin found a way to communicate with Isaac Hall. Judging from her writing, her parents had educated her very well. In contrast, Isaac Hall performed rather poorly.

Isaac Hall's company had previously dealt with Taiwanese businessmen, so he had studied traditional Chinese characters for a while, but he could only recognize many of them, not write them. When forced to write, he would often miss a stroke here or there. In Shawn Irwin's eyes, this was clearly a sign of incomplete education. She said nothing, but the corners of her eyes carried a faint smile. Every time she finished writing on the riverbank, the glance she gave Isaac Hall was always full of pride and self-satisfaction.

However, her pride did not last long. When Isaac Hall recited that poem just now, Shawn Irwin did not understand its meaning, but she knew it was a Han poem, with an ancient and simple style, which immediately made her look at Isaac Hall in a new light.

"Who are you?" Shawn Irwin could not hold back and immediately wrote this question on the riverbank with her spear.

"Jun" was a form of address during the Wei and Jin periods, used from superior to inferior or from the respected to the humble, with the corresponding term being "Qing." Shawn Irwin's question was not asking for Isaac Hall's surname or given name, but rather what ethnicity he belonged to.

"What ethnicity?" Isaac Hall touched his face, opened his mouth to say he was Han, but immediately closed it.

The Han dynasty had fallen. At this time, the correct way to refer to oneself would be as a "Jin person," but Isaac Hall had nothing but contempt for the weak Eastern Jin dynasty and was unwilling to admit he was a "Jin person."

Strictly speaking, he really was not a Jin person, and strictly speaking, he could not even be sure he was pure Han. After the brutal massacres of the Five Barbarians' invasion, the northern Han people were on the verge of extinction, and the subsequent great ethnic integration meant that all northern Han people had, to some extent, nomadic blood in their veins.

After the Five Barbarians' chaos, there came the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and the surviving Han people once again entered a deep abyss of suffering. Then came the Yuan dynasty, when in Sichuan alone, tens of millions were killed until only 400,000 women and children remained. Then came the Qing dynasty, with the "Three Massacres of Jiading," the "Ten Days of Yangzhou," and the literary inquisition by the one we hoped would "live another five hundred years"...

Every time a foreign people ruled the Central Plains, it was accompanied by a genocidal massacre. In the 21st century, pure-blooded Han Chinese may be rarer than giant pandas.

Isaac Hall's bewildered eyes looked around. Behind Shawn Irwin, the seven men were still prostrate on the ground, two or three of them seriously wounded, their blood staining the earth beneath them. Due to excessive blood loss, those few were already swaying unsteadily.

Although Isaac Hall disapproved of their brutality, he was unwilling to ignore the loss of life. He pointed behind Shawn Irwin, indicating that she should pay attention to her subordinates, who could not hold on much longer and needed to have their wounds bandaged immediately.