An Empire Begins from Humble Roots

In the final years of the Dayong Dynasty, natural disasters and man-made calamities leave the land strewn with the starving dead. On the northern frontier, Tatar cavalry raze a village. The young Liu Zheng loses everything amid flames and blood, and is forced to flee. Ahead lies an endless wilderness stretching south. Behind him, smoke from the fires devours his homeland. The chaos of war is a furnace, and human lives are no more than weeds. Along the road to survival, he meets his brave but simple-minded childhood friend, a clever yet pedantic scholar, a steady old soldier, and others. They are grains of sand swept along by the tide of their times, and the only support they have is one another. But hunger and slaughter are not the only dangers of a lawless age. The officials' extortion, the garrisons' infighting, and the unpredictability of human nature are more perilous than open warfare. From the northern frontier to the Jianghuai region, from refugee to frontier farmer, Liu Zheng struggles to survive in the cracks. He learns to grip the blade in his hand, and to read people's hearts and the shifting tides. When staying alive becomes the barest of hopes, and his companions fall one after another, Liu Zheng realizes that silence and endurance will never bring peace. In this crumbling world, he must carve out a path to survival for himself and all those who follow him. This is the story of an ordinary man struggling, learning, and transforming in a chaotic age, until he finally tries to shape the course of history. Witness how a young hunter climbs step by step toward the pinnacle of power through mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Witness, too, the terrible price that must be paid for a hero to be born. The times make the hero, but the hero dares to make the times as well.