Nirvana in Fire

Nirvana in Fire is the author Hai Yan's debut novel. It was first serialized on Qidian.com in 2006 and has since been revised and published several times; in 2014, Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House released a revised three-volume edition. The story is set in a fictional Liang dynasty of the Xiao surname: twelve years earlier, the Northern Yu raised troops and marched south, and Lin Shu, the young marshal of the Red Flame Army, went to war with his father at the head of seventy thousand soldiers to resist the enemy. Yet the seventy thousand Red Flame troops were framed by treacherous court officials and buried with their grievance at Plum Ridge, and the Lin family was destroyed. Lin Shu barely survived in desperation, but was struck by a rare poison, his body wasted by illness; after enduring the agony of bone-scraping and face-changing, he became "Mei Changsu," leader of the Jiangzuo Alliance, the foremost martial arts society in the realm. Twelve years later, the Langya Pavilion shocks the court and the country with the words "The Plum of Jiangzuo, a unicorn's talent; whoever gains him gains the world," and Mei Changsu becomes the object of eager courtship by both the crown prince and Prince Yu. Under the alias Su Zhe, he returns to the capital, Jinling, and maneuvers among the factions contending for the throne as a sickly strategist. On the surface he seems to associate with Prince Yu, but in secret he gradually supports Prince Jing, Xiao Jingyan, who has long been out of the emperor's favor and has little hope of succession; in the midst of his machinations he removes treacherous officials one after another, while facing the suspicions and tests of old friends and acquaintances, time and again evading and concealing the truth. The book takes "power intrigue" as its skeleton and the overlap of two identities—the young general who rode in thin armor through snowy nights, chasing the enemy a thousand li, and the gloomy strategist with a broken body and little time to live—as its core tension, weaving court politics with martial-world grudges, brotherly loyalty with duty to family and country, and moving toward the climax in which the Red Flame Army's grievance is finally redressed. The story advances layer by layer, with foreshadowing frequently paid off, writing the full range of human calculation while leaving behind a stirring tragedy of a pure heart and sacrifice.