Three Thousand Years as a Sacrifice

In Three Thousand Years as a Sacrifice, the most unremarkable village boy grips half a jade pendant and saves a pouch of dried red dates, then overturns the chessboard of the Three Realms one step at a time.

In a mud-brick house in Yun Village, five-year-old Yun Tonggu crouched beneath an old jujube tree. He wiped each of the reddest dates until their skins wrinkled, then tucked them into the inner pocket of his shirt. He didn't know the jade could send people flying, that the wooden tablet his father burned concealed old debts of a sect, or that hundreds of miles away, his younger sister was touching another piece of jade as it warmed in her hand.

The night the torches entered the village, his father fled with him under cover of darkness. He clutched his father's final letter before the mountain god's temple; at the Qingxuan Sect's scripture library, he went from menial laborer to uncovering secret files; on the Bridge of Helplessness, a phoenix hairpin pierced his chest and red dates fell to the ground as he smiled and said, "I don't blame you"; beneath the steps of the Jade Lake, he watched his sister kneel for forty-nine days to cut out the blood from her heart; and in the final battle at the Jiguang altar, their two jade pendants joined together and shattered the Buddhist holy site that had been raising sacrifices for three thousand years.

From Yun Village to the Hall of the Celestial Firmament, from a five-year-old boy who hoarded dates to a player who could send the pull of the Heavenly Dao flying back, the pieces can overturn the board when pushed too far.