The Prince of the Great Song

The Prince of the Great Song is a historical time-travel web novel by Jiu Kong, first serialized and exclusively signed on Zongheng Chinese Network. It runs about 3.46 million characters across more than 1,100 chapters, divided into volumes such as "Armed Horses and Iron Cavalry on the Battlefield" and "The Heart-Shaking Strife of Officialdom." The story is set in motion by a strange jade pendant that carries the protagonist back to the early Northern Song, an era when the chaos of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms had not yet been fully settled and the cavalry of the powerful northern neighbor still eyed the Central Plains. It opens in the border town of Yongle and then plunges into the Battle of Jinyang against the Northern Han. Starting from the lowest rungs of the army, the protagonist earns military merit step by step through a night raid, a flood attack, and a salt-making technique, is granted posts such as Renzhong Colonel, and formally enters the Song military system. The perspective then shifts from the battlefield to the capital, Kaifeng: the ledgers of the Three Departments, the suspicions of meritorious officials, court factions, and the undercurrents of martial brotherhoods intertwine with the movements of real historical figures such as Zhao Kuangyin, Zhao Pu, and Cao Bin. The author braids together four threads—war, martial-world vendettas, court intrigue, and romance—offering both the charge and stratagem of the front lines and the banquets, poetry, and assassins of Kaifeng, in an attempt to write a narrative of the Northern Song founding in which "hot blood and power games" run side by side. The book was completed on Zongheng Chinese Network in March 2018 and accumulated hundreds of thousands of recommendation votes during its serialization.