Shaosong

In 1127, after the Jingkang Incident brought down the Northern Song, Zhao Gou, the ninth son of the emperor, ascended the throne in Shangqiu amid popular expectation and changed the era name to Jianyan; this is known to history as the Southern Song. Yet barely had the new dynasty been founded than Li Gang was stripped of his chancellorship, Chen Dong was killed, Yue Fei was driven out of the army, Zong Ze was abandoned in Dongjing, and the anti-Jin deployments in Hebei were entirely dismantled. The assembled civil and military officials finally reached a consensus: escort the emperor south to Huaidian and then on to Yangzhou. It was on the way there, while Zhao Gou was worshiping the Daoist patriarch at the Mingdao Palace in Bozhou, that he fell headlong into the town's famous Nine-Dragon Well. Half a day later he woke up: the man was the same, but inside he had become Zhao Jiu, a modern university student from nine hundred years later. Upon waking, Zhao Jiu has only one thought: I will fight the Jin! But he has no troops, no power, and does not even know who his trusted aides are, while the assembled officials are still speculating about what has possessed the emperor. He can only feign illness while secretly identifying people, restoring to the battlefield one by one the betrayed generals Han Shizhong, Yue Fei, and Zong Ze, and at the same time, with astonishing courage, quelling mutinies in the army, suppressing the peace faction, and rallying the volunteer forces of the two rivers. In successive battles at Bagong Mountain, Nanyang, Changshe, and Mount Yao, the Jin army is repeatedly checked. Disregarding ancestral rules, Zhao Jiu promotes military officers, founds "Yuanyue" learning, reforms the bureaucratic system, and builds a navy, finally returning the capital to Kaifeng and facing the Jin across the river, step by step steering the Song back from its set course of southern flight and temporary respite onto the right path. The whole book is built on the character "shao": first, to continue; second, to guide—to inherit the Northern Song's legacy and open a new chapter for the realm.