Ode to the Bearer of the Confucian Sword

The thirty-second year of the Motan era, winter.

The heavens collapsed, and an age of chaos began.

Vengeful spirits wandered, and peace vanished from the mortal world.

The Heavenly Gate was about to open, drawing sword cultivators from across the land to set forth.

The Fusu swordsman wielded a sword to restore the Great Qin.

The Tianya swordsman, the boatman at the ends of the earth.

A barefoot wanderer smoothed the land beneath his feet, leveling every mountain along his path.

An emperor's ambitions stretched across ten thousand miles.

Years of famine drove a mad Daoist to offer a blood sacrifice to Heaven, using a horsetail whisk to slaughter entire cities.

A licentious monk from the Western Regions seized a solitary city, enslaved thousands of young women, and named it the City of Offering Flowers.

A brutal border lord slaughtered without mercy, building walls from human bones to divide the commanderies.

He spread a banquet of human flesh and invited the world's finest guests.

In this age of chaos, everyone carried a sword.

Heaven, earth, sovereign, kin, and teacher were no more; rites and music had fallen into ruin.

Only one man remained, the last Confucian scholar in the world, teaching a single child.

Through constant example, he passed on everything he knew.

When the child left the mountain, he would wield a Confucian sword, using virtue as his blade to bind all living souls beneath Heaven.