Dawn Approaches

Dawn Approaches is a long alternate-history novel by the web author Zhibai (real name Ban Liang), serialized on Zongheng Chinese Network starting in 2012. At roughly over three million Chinese characters and 835 chapters, it has been completed and once topped the site's click rankings. According to public sources such as encyclopedias, the book has not been formally published in print, and circulating online versions are mostly fan-compiled and edited. The story is set in the chaos of the late Sui dynasty: twenty years after the founding of Sui, unrest simmers beneath a surface of peace. Because of his unusual fate, the protagonist has been hunted by the imperial family since childhood and was fostered in a farming family. In a remote village he chops wood, carries water, feeds horses, and reads, treating daily labor as training and military texts as entertainment. He is humble toward others and keeps in mind that "among any three people, one can be my teacher"; he is diligent and refuses to waste a day; he yields in daily matters—except at life-and-death junctures, when it is the other person who yields. As the situation collapses, he is drawn step by step from a small figure on the frontier into the fighting among bandits, border troops, and steppe forces. With his black helmet, black hair, curved bow, and straight blade, and his elite Eighteen Riders, he rises amid warlord fragmentation and eventually raises an imperial banner bearing his own surname. The plot is brisk yet substantial, weaving youthful growth, military combat, and court intrigue together; it is one of Zhibai's representative early works of historical conquest fiction.