[Three Kingdoms] Undaunted Through Ten Thousand Calamities

Blurb One:

The curtain rises on an age of chaos, drawn back by a child of only twelve years...

A child who has lost the one they love descends into evil for the sake of revenge. Their sights are set squarely on Emperor Ling of Han, Liu Hong...

"The guilty must pay for their crimes. I'll make everyone who ruined my life pay in blood!"

"She was the last person who should have had to go through something like this. But if that bastard can be so heartless, don't blame me for showing no mercy!"

"Heaven is so unfair. Why do evil people live to a ripe old age while good people have to die?"

"I never wanted riches and glory. All I wanted was to live a quiet, peaceful life with them. But I'll never be able to make that wish come true..."

And it all began with a wrongful conviction in the first year of the Guanghe era...

Blurb Two:

In the ninth year of the Yanxi era, the long-standing tensions between the eunuchs and the literati grew ever worse, eventually erupting into the notorious Partisan Prohibitions.

From then on, the court fell further into corruption. Upright officials were either brutally murdered or forced to flee to distant lands.

The eunuchs held the entire Han Empire in their grip. They fawned and flattered, doing everything they could to please the emperor, while giving no thought to the common people suffering at the bottom of society.

Only one man, seeing those in power stray ever further from the people's will, shouldered all the responsibility himself and quietly protected an empire already shattered beyond repair.

Though he was already drenched in blood, he continued resolutely along this road fraught with danger.

At last, he fell, trapped in a snare those people had carefully laid for him.

But he was not surprised. He had known from the very beginning that this would be his fate.

He simply gazed into the distance and closed his eyes with a smile.

Six years later, a young man used the Taiping sect as cover and seized the opportunity of the Yellow Turban Rebellion to secretly set in motion the vast web he had laid years before.

His goal was clear: to bring this disordered empire back onto the right track and save the people from their suffering.

So he was willing to bear the condemnation of thousands, all to create a future that those who came before him never had the chance to see.

Sadly, whatever the final outcome, those who had died could never come back...

This work is dedicated to Fantasia Sango, Moriarty the Patriot, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Guo Jia.

Notes:

* This is an antihero story, with a moderate degree of historical research.

* Yuan Xi is gender-swapped in this novel.

* Su Mo's character is based on Guo Jia.

* Contains some highly angsty scenes.

* Yuan Shao gets routinely bashed. Wherever Boss Yuan shows up, there'll be comic relief... probably.

* Lots of foreshadowing and hidden plotlines. Three Kingdoms fans who enjoy detective games are welcome to come find the clues (hey!).

* Plenty of obscure characters and original characters appear.

Theme: This work is dedicated to Fantasia Sango, Moriarty the Patriot, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Guo Jia.