How a family of smiths in the Altai broke the empire that had ruled the steppe for a century and a half. The path follows the sources in order: the probe of 542, the embassy that first treated the Ashina as a power, the intercepted rising that gave Bumin an army, the refusal that made the war, and the two battles that ended it. Bumin's own article, written by the operator, is the spine; the others open it out.
- Bumin Khan The founder, and the decade that made him: read this first, and come back to it at the end.
- Göktürk raid of 542 A young leader's first probe, and why this work does not count it as the start of the war.
- Western Wei embassy of 545 The first time a Chinese state addressed the Ashina as a party in their own right.
- Defeat of the Tiele, 546 Fifty thousand submit to Bumin, and the second man in the khaganate is a subject.
- Anagui The overlord, seen from the side he stood against: the refusal, the insult, the walls.
- The Turkic War of Independence The six years between the refusal and the spring of 552, and what the silence in the record covers.
- Battle of Huaihuang, 552 The last Rouran army, the death of the khan, and Bumin's entry into Ötüken.