The Great Zhou Dynasty’s Fake Eunuch

During the Jinghe era of the Great Zhou, a century of accumulated ills had left the dynasty gravely diseased. A rigid class system blocked every path to advancement. Noble families monopolized resources, imperial power enslaved the people, and everyone in the court chased profit, while the common folk were condemned to live and die like fodder. The dynasty seemed to enjoy an unbroken age of prosperity, but its entire system had rotted to the core. Every struggle was merely a trapped beast fighting itself. Su An, a servant who narrowly escaped death, lay low in an ancient library as a fake eunuch. He had no peerless talent for martial arts and no powerful family to rely on. His past was a blank, and his life hung by a thread. Unlike the ignorant masses, trapped by fate and blindly devoted to the legitimacy of imperial rule, he saw the world through an entirely different lens. Knowing that the schemes of the imperial palace devoured all who entered and that the shackles of the system could not be broken, he concealed his talents and guarded his life. He was content to be the most ordinary speck of dust, making no demands and taking no risks, moving cautiously at every step in the hope of surviving the chaos. Meanwhile, Fu Chen, the boy who had lived and died alongside him, unlocked his innate martial physique in a desperate moment and broke through to the mid-eighth rank in just one year. Once a timid nobody, he transformed overnight into a peerless martial arts prodigy. Casting aside his gentleness and taking up the mantle of violence, he plunged into the princes’ struggle for power, becoming the old system’s sharpest and most loyal blade. From then on, the two took different paths, heading in opposite directions. Fu Chen rose by exploiting the rotten system, pursuing power through martial strength and believing that the strong should determine the fate of the world. He willingly became a weapon of violence for the old dynasty. Su An observed the world and sought to understand its truths, seeing through people’s illusions, the deceit of fate, and the system’s deep-rooted ills as he watched the entire dynasty collapse from within. Everyone believed that the chaos of a troubled age came from its people, its power struggles, and the ruler’s heart. But a festering rot accumulated over years is never one person’s fault. It comes from the shackles of the old order, the corruption of the old system, and the old rules that devour people. One day, when the deadwood has fallen away, he will cure a century of ills and break the shackles of ten thousand generations.