The Song Dynasty at the End of the Song Era: From the Start, I Kill a Prefect and Flee to Liangshan

(An alternate history spanning the Five Dynasties of Song, Jin, and Yuan) The world is divided among seven nations: Jin, Song, Western Xia, Western Liao, Qi, Yuan, and Tibet, alongside Dali, Gaotang, Nanyue, and Goryeo. Twenty years into this age of chaos, the tender eloquence of the literati cannot withstand the military might of Jin’s thirty wanhu commanders, and even the Five Great Masters of the world are no match for warriors clad in armor. The emperor gives his wife and daughters to the Jin to warm their beds, then serves them tea himself. The new emperor is busy submitting and changing his surname, slaughtering his own people, while no one knows that one wave after another of heroes from the grasslands is about to sweep across the world! A young man arrives here with a sword. The Divine Land has fallen and the Central Plains are in turmoil. Whoever takes the world becomes its master, so why spare the life of one man? The blue blade leaves its sheath and cleaves the vast sky; thunder in his palm shatters ninefold heaven. He once crossed a thousand feet of snow in the jianghu; now he rides to war amid the desert’s myriad beacons. His sword knocks stars into icy waters; his palm splits mountains, which fall into his wine cup. The martial alliance’s pact is written in blood; the border’s victory reports are still wet with ink. For fifty years the blue blade has been drawn. Alone, he once held the Central Plains at bay. His palm split Mount Hua’s towering peaks; his sword cleaved the Yellow River’s nine bends, their waters turned cold. He captured the Song ruler in the south by the riverbank; in the north, he broke Jin’s capital and trampled Helan. The Western Xia king’s banner fell beneath his horse; Goryeo’s jade seal cracked before his saddle. His battle robes were never unstarred, and his bloodstained blade remained wreathed in the smoke of the frontier. The campaign rolls claimed the lands of seventeen states; eight thousand miles of road buried the barbarians beneath the sky. Then came word of a dragon raging in the sea. With sword in hand, he could still calm the waves. Do not say the world has no heroes. Geese cross the vast sky, leaving characters like clenched fists. He plucks his sword and laughs, pointing it at the necks of the assembled heroes. Who can match his greatest deed? Banners billow across the setting sun. Alone, he leans on Mount Kongtong and watches the clouds and dragons.