Iron-Blooded Republic: From Warlord’s Son to Kingpin of a Chaotic Age

In the thirteenth year of the Republic, war rages across the land. The Zhili and Fengtian cliques stand on the brink of conflict, warlords battle one another, and ordinary people suffer. A military museum researcher transmigrates to Baoding, where he becomes Lu Chengwu, the legitimate son of Lu Dingshan, a Beiyang division commander. The moment he opens his eyes, he is trapped in a desperate situation: his fall from a horse and subsequent coma were part of a deadly plot. Within the army, an ambitious brigade commander covets his father’s military power; outside, Fengtian forces are secretly trying to kill him.

Armed with a century’s worth of military knowledge and foresight into history, Lu Chengwu casts off his naïveté and makes a name for himself in these turbulent times. He enforces discipline and purges dissenters, upgrades equipment to strengthen the army, and develops a base to stockpile provisions. Step by step, he transforms his father’s weak force into a battle-hardened army. When faced with Brigade Commander Zhao’s mutiny and attempted coup, Counselor Li’s covert aid from the Fengtian clique, the flames of the Zhili-Fengtian War spreading across the land, and the advancing Northern Expedition, he breaks through with an iron fist and navigates the shifting alliances with cunning.

Plots and counterplots abound, and danger follows at every turn. From life-and-death struggles in Baoding Prefecture, to the contest for control of the Central Plains in Beiping and Tianjin, and then to stirring the whole country into turmoil, Lu Chengwu rises against the odds as a young man in an age when human lives are worthless. He vows to end the chaos of warlord rule, resist the encroaching foreign powers, and forge an unprecedented legacy through blood and iron, rewriting China’s fate of decline. This is the epic rise of a ruthless hero, and a rousing song of blood and iron in a time of chaos.