The Age of Deterrence

In 2089, as the Qin Empire’s interstellar colonization plan entered its final countdown, its archenemy, the Dwarf Nation, launched a long-planned surprise attack under the control of the Li Nation. Coastal cities were engulfed in flames, but Qin’s elite forces had already embarked on their interstellar expedition. The only eight hundred soldiers left behind commanded an army of a million intelligent machines, keeping the flames of war from crossing the nation’s borders.

Aerospace commander Long Yun, mechanized forces commander Zhang Huai, marine beast forces commander Tang Yan, and intelligent army commander Cheng Angui were entrusted with the task in the nation’s hour of peril. Alongside a million reinforcements from Zhou, they crossed the sea to wage war. From tropical jungles to frozen wastelands, they had to fight not only a fanatical enemy, but also confront war’s cruelest moral choices: Should they shoot children who had been brainwashed? How should they treat prisoners of war who were genuinely remorseful? If justice must be upheld through battle, is it still justice?

Zhang Huai stood by the principle of “punishing guilt, not an entire people,” bringing him into fierce conflict with General Lin Xiong of Zhou, who demanded “an eye for an eye.” When victory finally came, the trial at the East Asian War Crimes Tribunal sparked an even deeper debate: Should evil deeds receive an equivalent punishment, or are reform and redemption just as important? Is the death penalty a manifestation of justice, or simply an easy way out?

After the war, carrying his trauma and hard-won reflections, Zhang Huai joined humanity’s first extrasolar colonization mission and set out for Zijin Star to build a new civilization. Could humanity break the cycle of hatred there? When they encountered a younger interstellar civilization, would they repeat the mistakes of colonialism, or find a new way to coexist?

This is a hard-hitting science fiction epic spanning three centuries of war, trials, and interstellar colonization, and, more than that, a profound inquiry into the nature of humanity.

It is also about the evil in human nature. What must be rooted out is not only the evils of the system, but the greatest threat to the survival of civilization.