Starting in Water Margin, My Ancestral Home Reveals the Tang Dynasty’s Longevity Arts

Clouds follow dragons, winds follow tigers; fame and fortune are but dust and dirt.

Look upon the realm, where the people suffer, and fertile lands for a thousand miles lie barren.

Survey the world: it is full of jackals and tigers. Who will take up the long spear and bind these arrogant foes?

Cross mountains of corpses, break through rivers of blood, and bring peace and clarity back to the world.

In the final years of the Northern Song, the court was corrupt and the people were suffering.

The powerful eunuch Tong Guan possessed the Sunflower Manual and commanded the northwest. The great Confucian scholar Huang Shang was consumed by a vendetta. The Ming Cult’s leader, Fang La, was preparing to raise an army in the southeast. The Thirty-Six Heavenly Spirits and Seventy-Two Earthly Fiends were about to gather at Liangshan, while Kaifeng teemed with countless gangs.

Guo Xu dreamed of Tokyo and awoke to find his father and brothers dead, with only his widowed sister-in-law left behind. Wolves circled outside, ready to seize the family’s business at any moment. After obtaining his family’s secret Longevity Art, Guo Xu founded an escort agency and set out to conquer the realm.

When he had unified the land, a Celestial Master Zhang presented him with a map. Only then did he learn how vast China had been in the Shang and Zhou eras, and how broad the seas truly were.

Later histories recorded: Our Great Zhou spans a territory without equal throughout history. To the far north lies the North Sea, to the far south the South Sea, to the far east the East Sea, and to the far west the West Sea. Wherever the sun and moon shine is Great Zhou. It is an empire on which the sun never sets!