The Zhang clan of Roaring Sands built the Gourd Dike, offered white horses and jade to the river, and for gene…
The Zhang clan of Roaring Sands built the Gourd Dike, offered white horses and jade to the river, and for generations tamed the waters by imperial decree, they became the River Master.
Young Zhang Yanling never believed in fate. To him, fate was a yoke, locking a man's spine and skull to the earth from infancy, leaving him no room to struggle. As a boy, he envied the heroes from storytellers' tales, those who rode through Jianghu with unbridled freedom, who came and went like the wind, leaving no trace. They never had to spend their days studying "Seven-Star Levee Ropes" by the Gourd Dike, nor memorize the Water Administration Code word by word under lock and key. And they certainly didn't have to descend into shadowed halls, treading on bleached bones, to tame... the dragon of Zhang clan.
Was this really fate? With that thought, Zhang Yanling went to the marketplace and picked out a fine white horse. He would flee to the desert's lone smoke in the far north, to the spring waters greener than indigo in Jiangnan. He would escape the Yellow River, whose veins dug deep into the heartlands, and every last trace of his predestined life.
The peach blossoms of the south bloomed fiercely, nothing like the barren banks of the Yellow River. But as Zhang Yanling rode, he brushed shoulders with a travel-worn woman in green. He returned the hat she'd dropped; she gifted him a pill she'd refined herself.
"What kind of medicine is this?"
"The life-saving kind."
"You've made so many. Who are you saving?"
"An entire city. Kaifeng."
Fate, it seemed, always seized you the moment you tried to run.