It had already been more than a thousand years since the Central Plains were unified under one empire.
That meant more than a thousand years had passed since the iron-fisted rule of successive emperors, backed by their transcendent martial arts and the might of the Imperial Army, had taken root in this land. It was also more than enough time for the descendants of those heroes—who once rose up for the sake of the suffering people and the world—to fall into corruption, drunk on power and privilege.
The founding emperor who had established the new dynasty to overthrow the First Emperor’s tyranny was long gone. His will was now so thoroughly stained with the blood of the people, with the repulsive sweat and greed of the ruling class, that it was difficult to even recognize what it once was.
The absolute emperor, who permitted no opposition, and the Imperial Army that blindly followed his will, had turned the empire into a grotesque monster that feasted without end on blood through the long centuries. Paved roads stretched unbroken, cities swelled vast and luminous—at night, they glittered as though stars had been pulled down from the heavens. Yet beneath those towering buildings, the mire festered with the sticky blood and tears of the starving, with pus seeping from stripped flesh.
Perhaps it was only natural that a myriad of eccentric wanderers, swordsmen, roaming knights, and men of conscience rose up, blades in hand, unable to watch idly. To the people of the empire, raised on the founding emperor’s myth, it was only to be expected.
But not one among that legion of righteous warriors ever succeeded in breaking the emperor or his Imperial Army.
And perhaps that too was only natural. How could a handful of men training in some remote mountain, clinging to ancient techniques, hope to prevail over emperors and soldiers forged in supreme martial arts under the empire’s full support?
Even if the powerless masses gathered into an army of a million, a mere ten thousand Imperial soldiers could sweep them away, cutting them down in waves with a few swings of their blades. In time, the martial sects of the Central Plains trained not for freedom or principle, but to catch the emperor’s eye—to be absorbed into the Imperial Army.
Thus, the empire’s numberless citizens lived and died under the yoke of greedy merchants and corrupt officials, unable to claim even a single plot of land or a single workshop. Born and buried without ever calling anything their own, they became nothing more than cogs in the empire’s machine, feeding the bellies of those enthroned above them.
So passed the days of despair, days that seemed to show another face of hell itself. And then—
A new land was discovered.
It lay across the endless eastern ocean, reached after weeks of sailing aboard great ships. A vast continent of sweeping grasslands and forests, high mountains and deep valleys, indifferent wastelands and proud rivers. Its flora and fauna were not so different from those of the Central Plains, nor were its monsters or people.
The current emperor, newly enthroned at the time, was surprised when the venture his predecessor had half-heartedly supported for amusement proved successful. But that was all.
According to those present, when the expedition returned with strange plants and animals, with people slightly different from the empire’s citizens, with gold and silver—he looked upon it all with indifference.
Such detachment suited the iron-blooded sovereign of a dynasty that had not only endured but grown stronger over more than a thousand years.
Yet perhaps that indifference was not his true heart, for soon the explorers were rewarded with treasures and new ships, with orders to establish a stable sea route between the new land and the empire.
The emperor’s full support—though perhaps only a trifling diversion to him—spurred the explorers and shipbuilders to quickly chart courses and maps. Soon, multitudes of citizens began crossing the sea aboard the massive vessels.
The natives of the new land had only small tribes, rarely numbering more than a few hundred. They cultivated little farmland. Thus, vast stretches of land lay unclaimed. To the empire’s subjects, it seemed the only chance to escape the grip of rapacious lords and merchants and own land of their own.
For decades, hundreds of thousands crossed the sea. Far from stopping it, the emperor created an imperial fleet under the throne, ferrying migrants in competition with private merchants. He even decreed that any land cultivated by a settler’s own hand would belong to them.
I suspect the emperor expected that even if a handful among the empire’s hundreds of millions crossed the sea, it would cause no trouble. He may even have been quietly pleased: without wasting imperial strength, the people themselves would plow new fields. And then, decades later—perhaps in his own reign, perhaps in his son’s—once the land had ripened, the merciless Imperial Army would surely come to devour it whole.
But there was something even the iron-blooded emperor and his army had not foreseen.
It was not only powerless peasants who crossed the sea.
There were righteous swordsmen barely clinging to survival in the shadows of imperial oppression, eccentrics and recluses hiding in mountains and valleys, scions of fallen dynasties thought extinct, men gathering strength in secrecy while dreaming of new orders. They too crossed the ocean, seeking a new dynasty, a new world.
And they were not alone.
Criminals fleeing the darkness of the cities, petty fortune-seekers chasing luck, madmen who practiced twisted demonic arts—all manner of selfish and vicious men crossed the sea as well.
The learned of the time feared that so many diverse people, gathered in one land, would explode like water cast into boiling oil—that it would end in slaughter and disaster.
But that was no more than needless fear. In my view, there were several reasons, but the greatest was this: the New Continent was truly vast, and compared to that vastness the people were very few.
… I too know that many learned men have already poured out as many books and lines as there are scholars. And on top of that, I wish to add one poor thread of my own thought.
That the emperor’s intent to swallow this land whole will fail.
A thousand years ago, martial arts were taught only to those with fate and connection—never to outsiders. Thus, in the chaos of the Warring States and the First Emperor’s tyranny, it was the roaming swordsmen who rose.
But the dynasty established after the founding emperor overthrew the First Emperor and the Hegemon was nothing like what those swordsmen had dreamed of. Under the empire’s mighty power and constant surveillance, they could never grow strong, condemned to wander in the shadows.
But this new land was different. Far removed from the empire, from the emperor, from the Imperial Army—this land was different.
Here, where righteous men and villains, sages and demons alike would overflow, this land could, I dare to say, be called a return to the ancient martial world of a thousand years past.
Here, countless beliefs, convictions, selfish desires, and martial arts would clash, each seeking to assert its will. From that conflict, sparks and sweat would ignite the life of a new martial world, giving it a body stubborn and unyielding—contrary to the emperor’s expectations.
Without the empire’s oppression, only the struggles for each martial man’s belief would kindle the flame of old romance once more.
Thus, the ember of the martial world, rekindled after a thousand years, would not so easily be extinguished by the emperor and his army across the sea…]
The rest of the book was soaked in blood, unreadable.
“When’s this story from?”
The man squatting over the book flicked through its pages a few times without care, then tossed it onto the ground. It landed atop a corpse lying on its back, staring blankly at the sky. The book began to soak slowly with blood, seeping from the great wound torn across the dead man’s chest.
“Romance, huh? Romance is lying on a soft bed in a cozy house, chewing snacks while reading martial stories. That fellow Yu Bang’s empire lasted a thousand years not because of romance, but because of martial arts and martial power. Where’s the romance in that?”
The man’s dry rebuke to the dead was followed by a long, crooked curl of his lips as he turned his head. He squinted against the red glare of the setting sun.
The sun was sinking, spilling the last rays of the day across the vast plains and their long horizon. Wisps of cloud stretched wide above, split starkly between light and shadow, flaunting their colors.
So too did the corpses scattered around the man.
Seven or eight bodies—men, women, even the elderly—lay sprawled, each with a gaping wound. A wagon with one broken wheel leaned on its side, cargo spilled across the ground. With no sign of horses, it was clearly the work of bandits.
The man squatting there studied the cooling corpses with crooked eyes, then slowly stood. His gaze fell on the heap of clothes strewn near the wagon. He rummaged through, looking for anything useful, but found nothing. Only a few garments small enough for a child.
But there were no children among the dead. Likely the bandits had taken them—to raise as bandits themselves, or to sell cheap.
“…A damned shame.”
Muttering to himself, the man placed the bamboo hat he’d been holding onto his head, spat lightly, and whistled short and sharp. At the sound, his horse, Jojo, ambled over from a short distance away.
The man adjusted the sword at his hip, mounted with practiced ease, and nudged the horse’s flank with his heel. Jojo snorted once, then broke into a run, carrying them swiftly away.
Man and horse raced across the red plain. Wind mixed with dust whipped under his hat and through his clothes, his body swaying with the rhythm of the saddle. Behind him, the corpses lay no more than half a day dead. Ahead of him stretched the glowing horizon.
It was late afternoon in the New World.