War ravaged Liyang, and the land was strewn with starving corpses. As refugees fell lifeless onto piles of bodies, a figure in blue came striding through the blood: Jiang Ni, the princess of fallen Western Chu. She came to their aid, and together they escaped by boat from their desperate circumstances. After surviving one near-death ordeal after another, they drifted to the remote overseas island of Yizhou.
From fishing and hunting in thatched huts during a dark age to farming and smelting iron in a feudal era, he led the survivors and Jiang Ni in rebuilding the flame of Western Chu, using Yizhou as their base.
Bai Qi drilled Qin’s elite troops, Huo Qubing commanded the northern cavalry, Han Xin laid an ambush on all sides, and Wang Yangming’s philosophy illuminated the land. Beneath the Chu banner, famed generals and literary heroes from across history gathered to restore the kingdom.
After ten years of preparation, with warships filling the seas like clouds, Xiang Siji and Jiang Ni personally led an army from another age in a counterattack on the Central Plains. Their mighty ships and cannons blasted open the walls of Wudi City, and Wang Xianzhi met his end beneath a storm of arrows. The cavalry trampled Taian City, forcing the Liyang Zhao clan to bow their heads. The 300,000 Northern Liang horsemen and the Northern Mang wolf cavalry were wiped out in a pincer attack by the Divine Machine’s Five Thousand Battalion and the Yue Family’s Beiwei Army.
On the day north and south were united, he received the abdication at Mount Tai and proclaimed himself emperor, naming Jiang Ni empress and the realm “Great Chu.” But the Heavenly Dao suppressed the mortal world, and the Gate of Heaven loomed above. Xiang Siji raised his sword to the sky. “No immortal will dictate terms in my mortal realm!” A million troops formed their ranks, and a rain of arrows and cannon fire tore through the firmament, finally smashing through the Gate of Heaven.
Amid a radiant glow, he took Jiang Ni’s hand and stood atop the ruins of the shattered Gate of Heaven, elevating the mortal dynasty into an immortal realm. From then on, the mortal world was the immortal world, and imperial authority was the Heavenly Dao.
