How magnificent was Great Liang, its armies pointing their spears afar as every tribe submitted.
In the twenty-second year of Liang, he opened his eyes and looked back on a life that had begun as a commoner and risen amid chaos. Blessed with a heaven-sent long life, he had spent over a hundred years on the battlefield, founding a glorious Great Liang that stretched for thousands of miles and commanded the allegiance of every nation.
Its laws and institutions were complete, its granaries full.
Its famed generals guarded the frontiers, and its territory reached west to the Congling Mountains and north to the edge of the northern deserts.
Its civil administration flourished, and a hundred volumes of government records preserved the regulations of the dynasty.
All within the four seas gave their hearts to Liang, and envoys from beyond its borders came each year with tribute.
Yet he also saw how, in old age, he had become stubborn and self-willed. His attendants had usurped power, the entire court had grown sycophantic, and the old ministers who had founded the realm had nearly all passed away.
The princes watched and waited. Military governors grew ever more powerful, while members of the imperial clan harbored resentment and secretly formed alliances.
The people were exhausted, the number of those fleeing their homes grew, and discontent simmered beneath harsh policies.
Rifts opened within the palace. The crown prince and his father had grown estranged, and disaster within the imperial household was already at hand.
Storm clouds were gathering over the palaces of Luoyang, while the grave markers at Be Mang were still warm. He was determined to save this flourishing age from collapse and ensure that Great Liang endured and prospered, so that his life on the battlefield would not be wasted, nor the people of the realm betrayed.
It all began in the early years of the Western Jin, with a young man in coarse clothes, born to a distinguished family. He navigated the rivalries of his clan and entered officialdom despite his humble status, rising from a lowly clerk to become tutor to the crown prince. With a civil official's sense of duty, he gathered the armies of the realm, seized the last imperial seal amid a world consumed by war, unified the north, quelled internal strife, overthrew Jin, and founded a new dynasty: Liang.
The whole world lies within the grasp of my hand.
