Winter, the ninth year of Chongzhen. I was the leader of the Southeast Theater’s Dark Blade special operations team. When I woke, I had become a starving junior officer in the border army at Xuanfu, Ming China.
My knowledge of history told me that Gao Yingxiang had just been captured, Li Zicheng was about to proclaim himself king, and beyond the passes, Hong Taiji was sharpening his blades.
Using my modern military skills, I had finally managed to feed my dozen gaunt men and make our dilapidated beacon tower impregnable. Then an urgent dispatch arrived, carried at top speed across eight hundred li:
“The expeditionary army sent against the Liao has been routed. Liaodong… is no longer a place for the living.”
At first, we thought the dark mass advancing from the north was a column of fleeing soldiers.
That was until our scouts risked their lives to bring back a “man” who was missing half his body, his entrails spilling out, yet still roaring.
My deputy, a forty-year-old veteran of the border army, shakily lit a torch.
In its glow, I stared at the familiar yet bluish-black, rotting face of a former comrade from the vanguard. I took a deep breath of the icy air, then slowly uttered two words:
“The dead are rising.”
The Great Wall was no longer ahead of us, beyond the passes. It was behind us. And what I had brought with me was the undying flame of the Chinese military spirit from five hundred years in the future.
