Warlord: From Liangzhou to the King of the Northwest

Republican-era history · Military development and farming · Alternate-history nation-building

In the autumn of 1922, Lu Zhenbang dropped out of the Beijing Army University and hurried back to Liangzhou to mourn his father.

His father, a warlord in the northwest, had been poisoned by the Ma family army. At the funeral hall, three of his uncles forced a division of the family estate, while three thousand battered soldiers surrounded the compound. Eighteen-year-old Lu Zhenbang had just one personal guard captain, two hundred loyal troops, two county seats, and six months of unpaid wages.

How would he survive the cutthroat battle royale that was the Republican era?