Rising Song

Rising Song (serialized originally as Butterflies Flit, Bees Bustle: Spring of the Xuanhe Era) is a long historical time-travel novel by the web author Chihu. It began serialization on Qidian in June 2011 and concluded in March 2012, running to 463 chapters and roughly 1.61 million characters. Set during the Xuanhe era of the Northern Song, the story follows Zhao Xing, a time traveler who lands in an age that looks prosperous on the surface but is already sliding toward crisis. The opening sets the tone in a Dickensian register: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Zhao Xing moves between the marketplace and officialdom, crossing paths with poets whose names endure through the ages, a fabulously corrupt minister, outlaws driven to the marshes, and a peerless beauty famed for her charms. Armed with knowledge and organizational skills far beyond his era, he starts with trade and gathering followers, then step by step pushes commercial reform and military restructuring, breaking through on multiple fronts amid political intrigue and feuds of the jianghu, with technological innovation and romantic entanglements woven in. As the Jurchen armies sweep south and the dynasty crumbles, his comfortable pursuit of personal gain gradually gives way to a struggle to defend the land and its people. The novel alternates between Song urban life and grand battle scenes, building a narrative world that is both historically grounded and boldly speculative. The author works through the social fabric, institutional machinery, and military technology of the Song at length. It is Chihu's third long historical time-travel novel, after Bright Moon of the Song and The Little Lord of Spring and Autumn.