Chapter 1: Prologue

When the autumn comes on the eighth day of the ninth month, my flowers will bloom and all others will wither.

The fragrance of the sky-piercing array will permeate Chang'an, and the whole city will be clad in golden armor.

By the end of the Tang Dynasty, the Tang Empire was terminally ill. Huang Chao, a scholar who had failed the imperial examinations in Chang'an, wrote this poem, which also expressed his wild ambitions. Not long after, in 874 AD, Huang Chao led his followers to join Wang Xianzhi in rebellion. The Tang Dynasty, already mired in the chaos of warlordism, exhausted its final national destiny in this war.

Huang Chao was ultimately defeated and died. The Tang Dynasty struggled on for another twenty years in its precarious state before its power was usurped by Zhu Wen in 907 AD. The Tang Empire, once the incomparably glorious center of world civilization, officially perished, and Chinese history entered the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Zhu Wen established the "Liang," known in history as the Later Liang, becoming the first Central Plains regime of the 53-year Five Dynasties period.

Zhu Wen was originally a subordinate general under Huang Chao. After surrendering to the Tang court, he turned around to suppress the rebel armies and then usurped the Tang to establish the Liang. He had a mortal enemy: Li Keyong, the Prince of Jin and Jiedushi (military governor) of Hedong, who had fought alongside him against the rebel armies at the end of the Tang. After the establishment of the Later Liang, the two sides were in constant conflict. When both Zhu Wen and Li Keyong died, their sons continued the struggle. Finally, in 923 AD, Li Keyong's son, the Prince of Jin, Li Cunxu, declared himself emperor with the dynastic title "Great Tang," known in history as the Later Tang, and subsequently destroyed the Later Liang. History entered the second period of the Five Dynasties: the Later Tang.

Shi Jingtang, the Jiedushi of Hedong under the Later Tang, was a founding hero and highly valued by the imperial court; the Emperor Li Siyuan even married his daughter to him. However, after Li Congke ascended the throne, mutual suspicion and infighting arose between the monarch and his ministers due to the objective threat posed by the powerful generals commanding the troops. Shi Jingtang decided to rebel against the Tang. At the cost of ceding the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun and declaring himself a "son" and subject to the Liao Dynasty, he sought the help of Emperor Taizong of Liao. He then joined forces with the Liao army to march south and destroy the Later Tang. In 936 AD, Shi Jingtang declared himself emperor with the dynastic title "Jin," known in history as the Later Jin.

Shi Jingtang's act of acknowledging a "father" (the Liao Emperor) caused many in the country to feel humiliated, and rebellions never ceased. Both of his imperial sons were killed due to these uprisings. On his deathbed, Shi Jingtang passed the throne to his adopted son, Shi Chonggui, who decided to gradually break away from his dependence on the Liao Dynasty. This move immediately triggered a war with the Liao. The Liao launched three major invasions, and Shi Chonggui lost everything in the final war. His entire family was captured, his wives and concubines were violated, and the Later Jin perished.

However, the Khitan people were not welcomed by the Han people in Hebei and Henan due to their long history of burning, killing, and looting. After the Khitan ruler ascended the throne in Kaifeng, he found it impossible to govern and felt it was dangerous to remain in the Central Plains, so he decided to retreat. With the Central Plains leaderless, Liu Zhiyuan, the Jiedushi of Hedong under the Later Jin, declared himself emperor in Taiyuan. He led his army south to take over Luoyang, Kaifeng, and other areas, and successively recovered various prefectures in Henan and Hebei. In 947 AD, he established the "Han," known in history as the Later Han.

Guo Wei was a founding hero of the Later Han and was also highly valued by the emperor. After the death of Emperor Gaozu of Han, Liu Zhiyuan, Guo Wei helped the Later Han emperors suppress rebellions multiple times. Among these, the rebellion of the Later Han general Li Shouzhen, the Jiedushi of Hezhong, posed a great threat to the court and relied on Guo Wei to suppress it. However, the Hidden Emperor of Han feared that Guo Wei would follow in the footsteps of his predecessors. In the ensuing mutual distrust and internal infighting, the emperor killed Guo Wei's entire family, but failed to eliminate Guo Wei himself. Consequently, Guo Wei's army marched back to Kaifeng, killed the Hidden Emperor, and the Later Han perished. In 951 AD, Guo Wei declared himself emperor with the dynastic title "Zhou."

When Guo Wei declared himself emperor and founded his state, Liu Chong, the Jiedushi of Hedong under the Later Han, also declared himself emperor in Taiyuan, known in history as the Northern Han, becoming one of the "Ten Kingdoms" that held regional power outside the Central Plains dynasty. Liu Chong wanted to borrow Khitan troops to march south, hoping to follow the same pattern to destroy the Later Zhou and make himself the master of the Central Plains, but he did not succeed. The Later Zhou also failed to destroy the Northern Han throughout its existence, and the two sides remained in constant conflict. In addition to the Northern Han, there were numerous regional separatist regimes in the south, such as in Sichuan, Huguang, and Jiangnan, collectively known as the Ten Kingdoms.

The Later Zhou passed through two generations of emperors, Guo Wei and his adopted son Chai Rong. The national strength gradually grew, and they began to implement a strategy to unify China step by step. However, when the third emperor, Chai Zongxun, ascended the throne, he was only a few years old. Consequently, Zhao Kuangyin, who was a general of the Later Zhou imperial guards, launched a mutiny at Chenqiao. In 960 AD, he declared himself emperor and established the Song Dynasty, and the Later Zhou perished. The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period thus ended, and Chinese history entered the Northern Song period.

...

The Fu clan.

Fu Yanqing was a figure who was mainly active in the late Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, coming from a family of military generals. His grandfather was Fu Chu, the Prince of Wu, and his father, Fu Cunxin, the Prince of Qin, was an adopted son of Li Keyong. By Fu Yanqing's generation, he had been enfeoffed as the Prince of Huaiyang, the Prince of Wei, and the Prince of Wei (衛王); all nine of his brothers were powerful military governors holding command over troops.

But the most famous members of the Fu family were his daughters; three of his daughters became empresses, serving as the mother of the world. Among these three empresses, the eldest daughter, Lady Fu, was the empress of Emperor Shizong of Zhou, Chai Rong.

In 947 AD, Liu Zhiyuan established the Later Han, which was the fourth dynasty of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. That year, Lady Fu was 16 years old. Because her father was transferred to govern Yanzhou, she moved with him. In Yanzhou, she encountered a young man who was starving, freezing, and near death. Moved by compassion, Lady Fu begged her father to save the young man, whose name was Guo Shao.

Not long after, Lady Fu was married to the son of the Later Han general Li Shouzhen and went to Hezhong Prefecture. Guo Shao accompanied her as a guard.

In 950 AD, a wandering Taoist saw Lady Fu and remarked that she had the physiognomy of an empress. This further stimulated Li Shouzhen's ambition: if his daughter-in-law had the physiognomy of an empress, wouldn't his son be the emperor? Li Shouzhen then made up his mind and raised an army in Hezhong.

The Later Han court sent Guo Wei to lead the army to suppress the rebellion. Li Shouzhen was defeated, and the chaotic troops stormed into the mansion, slaughtering his entire family. His daughter-in-law, Lady Fu, did not wish to be buried with them and fled in a hurry toward the inner chambers to hide. Her guards and servants had all run away, and she only encountered Guo Shao, who was willing to block the pursuing soldiers for her.

Guo Shao, mindful of Lady Fu's life-saving grace and for other reasons, wished to repay her kindness with his life... In the chaos, he was struck in the head by a blunt object and was discarded in a mass grave outside the city along with countless corpses. At this moment, an accident occurred in space and time; the young man of the Five Dynasties had just died, but by a stroke of fate, his body was possessed by a soul from the modern era, and he struggled to wake up.

Lady Fu did not die either. Instead, relying on the friendship between her father, Fu Yanqing, and Guo Wei, she was adopted by Guo Wei as his foster daughter. Soon after, Guo Wei and Fu Yanqing hit it off and arranged a marriage, taking this foster daughter as a daughter-in-law and having Lady Fu remarry Guo Wei's adopted son, Chai Rong.

The family of Emperor Taizu of Zhou, Guo Wei, had been wiped out in the internal infighting of the Later Han, and he had no sons left. He had no choice but to let his adopted son, Chai Rong, serve as his heir, eventually passing the throne to Chai Rong three years later. Lady Fu was Chai Rong's wife and thus became the first empress from the Fu family.

However, it seems a butterfly appeared in the long river of history. When Li Shouzhen rebelled in Hezhong Prefecture, a guard who should have died came back to life, as if an unknown butterfly had appeared. It flapped its wings, gradually influencing the face of history...