Isaac Hall still didn’t move. He looked at Shawn Irwin with a gaze full of surprise.

“They can grieve, but I cannot grieve.” Shawn Irwin looked calmly at Isaac Hall, uttering this saddest of replies in the most indifferent tone.

This sentence, Isaac Hall understood.

After coming to this world—perhaps due to the effects of time travel, or perhaps because some unknown fate made his mind exceptionally focused—Isaac Hall found his memory to be extraordinarily strong. Any word Shawn Irwin said to him, he could parrot back perfectly. There weren’t many new words in this sentence; by guessing and inferring, Isaac Hall understood what Shawn Irwin meant.

Every life is worthy of mourning, and to bless the fallen in battle is nothing unusual. But who will care for the Murong people killed by the Yuwen Xianbei?

In this bloody age of slaughter, it is not only the Han people who suffer; it is the hardship of the entire Huaxia nation. Murong and Yuwen are of the same tribe, yet that did not spare them from the fate of their country’s ruin and their families’ destruction. The mutual slaughter between them was no less fierce than that between the Hu and Han.

Today, Isaac Hall blesses them—is it for their killing, or for their survival?

If Isaac Hall dies tomorrow, who will care?

Isaac Hall felt a wave of despair. He used his spear to write a few words on the riverbank, which, translated into modern language, would be: “I need to be alone for a while. Everyone, take care. Farewell.”

Chapter 5: The Duty of Restoration

Shawn Irwin was seized by panic. She hurriedly grabbed the corner of his clothes and began to speak anxiously. After a few sentences, seeing the confusion on his face, she quickly picked up the hooked spear and started writing rapidly on the sand, all the while refusing to let go of his sleeve, tugging Isaac Hall this way and that.

“Where are you going? Does your country still exist?”—two questions in a row, striking heavily at Isaac Hall’s heart. His mind was in chaos; he staggered back several steps, barely managing to stay upright and not faint, but he was too weak to reply.

Shawn Irwin quickly wrote again on the riverbank: “Take me to Goguryeo, and I will give you many treasures.”

Isaac Hall stomped heavily on the words “treasures” with his foot, showing his disdain.

In this bloody age of slaughter, swords and blades are the only hard currency. It’s hard enough just to survive in this chaotic world; flaunting a pile of treasures would only invite disaster.

Shawn Irwin stared at him with bright, tear-filled eyes. She dropped the hooked spear and clung tightly to Isaac Hall’s sleeve, like a drowning person clutching driftwood, refusing to let go. As she shook his sleeve, her face was full of pleading, and she chattered to her subordinates, pointing and gesturing.

She didn’t want to let go, simply because she had nowhere else to turn.

All the men in Shawn Irwin’s clan had perished, forcing this young woman to shoulder the mission of restoring her nation with her frail shoulders. The Murong Xianbei ran rampant in Liaodong; to travel by land would mean fighting through mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Isaac Hall had a small boat and had appeared mysteriously on the sea, with formidable combat skills and miraculous medical abilities, making her determined to win him over.

Isaac Hall gradually understood what Shawn Irwin was saying. She was describing her situation in the calmest tone: the brutal slaughter, the narrow escapes from death, the journey through hunger and cold—all were recounted as if they were faint memories. Her thin, delicate frame emphasized that these seven people could not possibly reach Goguryeo by land, so she hoped Isaac Hall would take them directly by boat to Goguryeo’s territory.

“Where is Goguryeo?”

“I’m not sure. Two years ago, they lost Nansu City north of the river to the Murong Xianbei. Now, they should be south of the Yalu River.”

“The Yalu River?” For the first time in this world, Isaac Hall heard a familiar place name. His eyes immediately cleared. Upon further inquiry, he learned that this name had only recently come into use, because in spring the river’s water was as green as a mallard’s neck, so the people of Liaodong named it the Yalu River. Its official name, however, was Mazishui. During the Three Kingdoms period, when Cao Wei’s Youzhou Inspector and General Wu Qiu Jian attacked and burned Goguryeo’s capital, Wandu, this name was first reported to the imperial court and appeared in historical records (the name Yalu River was not officially adopted until the Tang dynasty).

“The Murong Xianbei attacked Goguryeo?” Isaac Hall mulled over what Shawn Irwin had just said, a chill running from the top of his spine to his tailbone. “What is the situation in Goguryeo now?”

The situation in Liaodong was chaotic. Previously, in order to defeat their old enemy, the Yuwen Xianbei, the Murong Xianbei had spent several years attacking Goguryeo before turning on the Yuwen. A few years ago, the Murong Xianbei delivered the final blow, storming into Wandu City, and the King of Goguryeo, King Gogugwon, escaped alone on horseback.

The Murong Xianbei had a nasty habit of digging up their enemies’ ancestral tombs. After their victory, this vice flared up again: they dug up the tomb of King Micheon, the father of King Gogugwon, and then looted all the gold and silver that Goguryeo had accumulated over generations. They also abducted more than fifty thousand households of Goguryeo people, including King Gogugwon’s birth mother, Lady Zhou, and many concubines. In the end, the Murong Xianbei burned Wandu City to the ground and took the corpse of King Micheon back with their army.

Goguryeo took advantage of the Eastern Jin’s decline in power to retake the Jin’s Liaodong Commandery, spending several years rebuilding Wandu City, which had been destroyed by Wu Qiu Jian’s eastern campaign. But who could have predicted that less than four months after King Gogugwon moved into Wandu City, the royal city would once again be burned down by the Murong Xianbei.