Imperial Descendants

Emperor's Blood is an alternate-history epic serialized on Zongheng Chinese Network by the contracted author Zhibai (real name Ban Liang). Running approximately 2.07 million characters, the novel is divided into three parts: "Internal Troubles and External Threats," "Campaigns South and North," and "The Roar of the Fierce Tiger." The story opens in Taiyuan in the twentieth year of the Qianyou era of the Northern Han: under a scorching sun, refugees fleeing war have pitched thatched huts along the base of the city walls; cavalry of the northern Liao empire raid southward from time to time; and a column of armored horsemen gallops through the streets of the capital, Taiyuan, straight out the south gate toward the capital-region barracks—an age of chaos is coming, with internal strife and foreign menace closing in at once. Set against a backdrop of fragmentation reminiscent of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, the novel unfolds around the struggle for imperial power and the unification of territory: court intrigues, a crown prince's faction of rebels, loyalist veterans, and the shadowy secret guard all take their turns on stage, while the protagonist maneuvers between treacherous royal infighting and regional warlordism. The middle section shifts to campaigns south and north—iron cavalry sweeping the field, heavy riders breaking formations, flanking raids—with military conquest and political calculation advancing in tandem. The later chapters broaden the horizon to farther campaigns: nine states extinguished, the Western Xia subdued, the Tibetan tribes trampled, fleets sent across distant seas, three expeditions against the Khitan—all building toward final unification, "a land of splendor, like a song, like a painting." Across more than six hundred chapters, the work lays out a panorama of warfare and a cast of characters from the age of cold steel. Fast-paced, it is a quintessential hot-blooded historical web novel of the conquest-and-hegemony school.