Prologue
The idea for this novel came from a question that troubled me: in stories set during the Three Kingdoms period, the protagonists invariably climb their way up over mountains of corpses. Kill one man and you’re a criminal; kill ten thousand and you’re a hero. This logic has practically become an iron law. Is slaughter really the only way to rise to power in a chaotic age?
And so, the “Do One Good Deed a Day” System was born.
This is a completely different kind of progression system. Other people’s systems reward them for killing enemies and capturing cities; Duan Fan’s System only rewards good deeds. Save a dog and gain 0.1 virtue points; save a wounded soldier and gain 0.3; risk your life to drag a trapped comrade out of a sea of flames and gain 10.8. Virtue points can raise his strength, intelligence, and charisma, unlock skills, and grant new privileges, helping him grow from a dying foot soldier into someone who can change the world.
Some people ask whether it’s naive to speak of kindness in a law-of-the-jungle age. Quite the opposite: kindness is all the more precious precisely because the world is in chaos. When everyone speaks with swords, choosing to make your stand through goodwill is itself the greatest strength.
Duan Fan isn’t trying to be a pushover in a chaotic age. He’s proving that doing good isn’t weakness, and saving people isn’t foolishness. Kindness can be a form of strength, one that makes a person unimaginably powerful.
Do one good deed a day, and let every step rest on a foundation of virtue. No one has ever walked this road, from the lowest foot soldier to unifying the Three Kingdoms, but Duan Fan will see it through.
Kindness has never belonged only to the weak.
