Tales of the Sui Dynasty’s End

After dying for his country, elite soldier Li Cangming opened his eyes to find himself the commander of the Eighteen Riders of Yanyun at the end of the Sui dynasty.

He thought heaven had granted him a second life. His modern tactical thinking crushed the age of cold weapons. He cut through Turkic cavalry like vegetables, and enemy camps became his backyard. The thrill was off the charts; he was practically a god.

Until he encountered a Turkic funeral procession deep in the Yin Mountains.

The dead were walking on their own. The coffin held no bones, but a ghost mask identical to the one on his face.

The mask began to grow hot, unfamiliar seal-script characters appearing on its inner surface. Stranger still, an enemy general he had personally buried appeared on the battlefield again on the seventh day, with the same armor, the same scar, and even the same manner of death.

Something was wrong with the late Sui dynasty.

The truth came to light: the ghost mask was no mask at all, but a remnant of a warlike civilization that had fallen to witchcraft. Wearing it granted power that could overwhelm all others. The price was that the mask slowly came to know you. The day it knew you completely, you would no longer be yourself.

And Li Cangming wore the last master mask.

It could control the other seventeen subordinate masks.

In other words, the seventeen brothers who had fought and bled at his side were becoming part of the masks, one by one.

When the last brother’s mask grew hot, Li Cangming drew his blade.

Would he kill them, or become their master?