Zhu Xiangsha

In the northwest of the Great Wilderness stood Mount Xuanyuan. Below it, the Red River wound its way through the land, its waters the color of red clouds and never running dry through the seasons. Beside the river lived a tribe called Zhuxiang, renowned for generations for mining its sands and forging weapons. Legend had it that the ancestors of the Zhuxiang tribe once forged the Xuanyuan Sword for the Yellow Emperor, and were granted a hundred li along the Red River as their fief.

Three hundred years ago, the Zhuxiang tribe vanished overnight. The Red River flowed on in silence, leaving only grains of sand that glimmered blood-red beneath the moonlight. The Great Wilderness whispered that the Zhuxiang tribe had angered the gods and been wiped out; others claimed they had found an ancient secret art of weapon-forging and withdrawn from the world, waiting for the day their divine weapon was completed, when the realm would change hands.