In the first year of Mingdao under the Northern Song, Lu Yihang, the son of a fishing family in Dengzhou, loses his family to Japanese raiders. He is saved by Mr. Liu, guardian of The Sword Manual for Pacifying the Barbarians. Through the “Heart-Tempering Method,” he cultivates righteous energy; with the “Formation-Breaking Form,” he survives life-and-death battles; and by following the “Chapter on Protecting the People,” he keeps the common folk safe. In time, he becomes a righteous hero of the martial world. He lives through the upheavals of the Qingli Reforms and Wang Anshi’s reforms, defending the new policies with his martial skill and fighting Western Xia with his sword. But because he holds firm to the principle that “the people’s livelihood comes first,” he is cast aside by the struggles between the reformers and conservatives. In his later years, he retires to Mount Lao to pass on his skills, hoping only to preserve the spark of “defending the land and protecting the people.”
During the Shaoxing era of the Southern Song, the young Shen Mingzhang inherits Lu Yihang’s legacy and descends the mountain with The Sword Manual for Pacifying the Barbarians. He protects refugees fleeing south and helps Yue’s army fight the Jin. He forms the Pacify-the-Barbarians Alliance, uniting righteous fighters from across the martial world. Even after the failed Longxing Northern Expedition and years of stalemate between the Song and Jin, he continues to teach “distinguishing right from wrong and honoring loyalty and righteousness,” opening martial arts schools to train young patriots. As Mongol hooves draw ever closer, he may be old, but he still foresees the danger of the Mongols and plants the seeds of resistance against the Yuan among the Southern Song’s martial world.
