“Last year we were fighting out to the North beyond the Great Wall, and this year we’re fighting far out in the West on the Kashgar river. We’ve washed our blades in the streams of Parthia, and grazed our horses amid the snows of Tian Shan. But the beacon fires are always burning. The marching and fighting never stops, nor does the dying. You should know that the sword is a cursed thing that the wise man uses only if he must.”

~ Li Bai, Tang Chinese poet