During the Xiande era of the Later Zhou, Zheng En, an oil presser from Suanzao Village outside Bianliang, relied on his brute strength and honest heart to punish the village bully with his bare hands. But after being framed, he was forced to leave his home behind. At Luomapo in the Taihang Mountains, he pulled up a tree to drive off bandits and save the scholar Zhao Kuangyin. The two hit it off at once. Later, at the Zuixian Tower in Yecheng, he became sworn brothers with Chai Rong, a man with ambitions for the whole realm. From then on, he embarked on a journey through a time of turmoil. From serving as a daring vanguard who raided Jinyang at night and burned the grain route, to becoming the key figure who secured Bianliang at Chenqiao Station, Zheng En lived by the creed of “protecting the people and bringing peace to the realm.” But his blunt nature made him an easy target. At the Lantern Festival banquet, the Han siblings framed him, and he died tragically at the hands of his sworn brother Zhao Kuangyin. All he left behind was his mother’s bloodstained peace charm and his dying words: “Second Brother, protect the people.”
Zheng En’s wife, Tao Sanchun, was the beloved daughter of the military training commissioner of Yingtian Prefecture, and her martial skills were every bit as good as a man’s. When she heard of her husband’s death, she swore over his body to seek justice and led three thousand veterans in a siege of the palace. With an iron will, she forced Zhao Kuangyin to execute Han Long and sentence Consort Taohua to death. She also took up the Dragon-Beating Staff, which could be used “to strike a foolish ruler above and corrupt officials below,” and took charge of the imperial guards, enforcing strict discipline. When Emperor Taizu of Song led a campaign against Southern Tang and was trapped in Shouzhou, no one at court dared to answer the call. Tao Sanchun donned her armor and took command, setting out as a woman general who would pacify the south. She lured the enemy into a valley and persuaded famous generals to surrender, writing a legend of a woman marshal on the banks of the Huai River. Amid the fires of war, she was also reunited with her son, Zheng Yin, whom she had not seen for seven years.
Orphaned by his father’s death at age five, Zheng Yin went to live in seclusion on Mount Hua and study under the Patriarch Chen Tuan. During seven years of arduous training, he grew from a child who would throw down his spear in anger into a skilled fighter who mastered a spear style and archery combining hardness and softness through the insight that “water drops wear through stone.” He also came to understand the fate behind his father’s words: “The rigid are easily broken.” After descending the mountain, he first rescued villagers from Southern Tang soldiers, then broke through the siege of Shouzhou to save the emperor. With his eighteen-foot Serpent Spear
