Song of Rivers and Mountains

Song of Rivers and Mountains is an alternate-history novel that the web author Little Beylor has serialized since 2012. The story opens as the protagonist, Liu Feng, wakes from a long nightmare into a fictional ancient world of contending lords, barbarian horsemen pressing at the borders, and aristocratic clans scheming within. Built on the framework of the Hundred Schools of Thought, the book gives the Militarists, Daoists, and other schools their own power bases and lays hidden pieces both in court and on the battlefield. The protagonist starts by learning martial arts in a small town, joins the Militarist school, later takes charge of Luming, fights his first battle in the northern frontier, and by circumstance enters Chang'an, where he is drawn into the whirlpool of imperial succession and clan rivalry. Its spiritual core is the line "A true man should carry a three-foot sword and win undying merit in the world," and it advances on two tracks: the flash of blades and the bodies wrapped in horsehide on the battlefield, and the intrigue and alliances of the court. The narrative spans eight volumes, from the youthful spirit of "Years Have Not Yet Stain'd the Dust" to the world-as-chessboard contest of "Heaven and Earth as the Board, I Speak with You" and "The Three Thousand Great Ways, You Are the Honored One," using "heaven and earth as a chessboard" as its central metaphor to stage the collision between individual choice and the tide of the age. The author describes the work as "alternate history—perhaps nothing soaring or fantastical, but written to win a smile," with a style that favors steady calculation in power politics and warfare rather than quick, headlong conquest.