The Vermilion Bird Continent has been ravaged by war for five hundred years.
What would it feel like to spend your whole life, from birth to death, displaced and fleeing from place to place? To emerge from the flames of war into the world, then bid it farewell amid the smoke and ash: only those who live through such troubled times can truly understand that helplessness and despair.
They say the chaos has lasted five hundred years, but in truth, it has lasted far longer. The peaceful days of antiquity, long since withered into yesterday’s flowers as history moved on, survive only in tales passed from mouth to mouth. With every passing year, they seem more and more out of reach. The lands have been divided for so long that even the court historians have forgotten how many years this turmoil has endured...
The Han, Hu, Qiang, Xianbei, Mongols, and others have all taken the stage of history, building one regime after another in legendary fashion, only to see them toppled one by one. Cities caught in the flames of war have once again fallen into an endless cycle...
At some point, a prophecy began circulating across the continent: Whoever obtains the Heavenly Secret will rule the world. The powers from every corner sent out their best people to search far and wide. But after generation upon generation of seekers failed, the Heavenly Secret seemed to become nothing more than a myth, the people’s last comfort. Little did they know that this very “Heavenly Secret” only made the ambitious even more greedily curious. Open conflict gave way to secret struggles, with victory and defeat hanging by a thread...
