There's a saying in the opera world: Actors are lowly, and martial skills can't protect you. But nobody knows that Su Wangong, the young warrior performer of the Yuzhen Troupe, can borrow the spirit of any character he sings. As Zhao Yun, he rides alone into the enemy's ranks seven times and fights his way back out; as Gao Chong, he knocks a charging war chariot aside with a silver spear; as Guan Yu, he wields the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, making even ghosts and gods flee. In the waning years of the Qian Dynasty, foreigners with weapons and supernatural abilities batter at the gates, Japanese ninjas abet the enemy, and a martial arts ban is issued to suppress every martial artist under heaven. With a flourish of his costume and a crash of drums, Su Wangong rises from a background performer in the Thirteen Mile Stockade to the pinnacle of martial opera. What isn't onstage, he sings into being; the enemies offstage, he cuts down himself, until one day he performs a play of his own devising.
