As Qin fell and Chu declined, Chu and Han vied for supremacy, and the land was drenched in the flames of war. Su Heng, a country boy from the bamboo groves of Fuling, entered the world with the secret military arts of Guiguzi, navigating the clashes among Confucians, Mohists, Daoists, Legalists, Yin-Yang scholars, and the other schools. He braved the most perilous corners of the martial world, discerning good and evil in people's hearts; he played the game of war across the Central Plains, shaping the rise and fall of the realm. When the fighting ended and the Han Dynasty was founded, princes and nobles at the golden palace offered him titles, but he refused them outright, clad in white. Yet a golden age was far from peaceful: emperors' suspicions simmered, powerful ministers plotted endlessly, and the embers of chaos waited to flare anew as the doctrines of the various schools clashed once more. He spent half a lifetime in bloodshed to bring peace, all for the people to live in safety. Once the malice across the land had been purged and the common folk's hearth fires burned bright again, Su Heng cast aside his peerless fame and retired to the bamboo groves among the clouds. The grand ambitions of a thousand years would all become dust; only the heart's true nature could remain unstained. One volume of worldly turmoil conceals a chaotic age; four volumes of rivers and mountains return to the man in white.
