After Yu Wang of Great Xia established his rule over all under heaven, he used the bronze of the Nine Provinces to forge the Nine Tripods, proclaiming that all clans should cease their wars and bloodshed so the people could live in peace and prosperity. He also ordered the secret forging of an iron skeleton, into which a secret art and the three treasures of Yu Wang were fused. It was called the Exquisite Iron Bones. From then on, all the clans bowed in submission and acclaimed Yu the Great as the common sovereign of all under heaven.
The Nine Tripods passed from Great Xia to the Hua, and from the Hua to Shenzhou, enduring through three dynasties over a total of eighteen hundred years. For thousands of years, though feuding lords fought and dynasties rose and fell, the Nine Tripods remained in the ancestral temple, while the Exquisite Iron Bones never again appeared in the world.
Only in the final years of Shenzhou, when the lords fought over the realm and war once more engulfed the land, did the Nine Tripods disappear. Then the prophecy, "When the Nine Tripods are lost, the Iron Bones shall emerge, and peace will return to all under heaven," came to pass. Whoever obtained the Nine Tripods could rule the realm; whoever obtained the Exquisite Iron Bones could learn the whereabouts of the Nine Tripods and gain eternal life. Princes, nobles, generals, ministers, and heroes of the martial world all pursued them with fervor, and the martial world was once again awash in blood and violence…
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