Warlords Contend for Supremacy

Warlords Contend for Supremacy is a long virtual-reality online game novel by the web author Yue Shu, about 3.615 million Chinese characters long and now complete. In the story, the AI of an alien Level 14 civilization, while organizing data on Blue Star and collecting historical samples, casually constructs a virtual reality world a thousand times the size of Blue Star and draws elite figures from every dynasty, from the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods to the twenty-first century, into it—emperors and generals, philosophers and sages, strategists and famed commanders, heroines and beauties, all gathered like stars to reenact heroic battle songs on the same continent. The protagonist is an ordinary person from the twenty-first century who, upon entering the game world, luckily obtains a hero's legacy and becomes a lord. He does not rely on brute force to crush opponents but steadily grows through good judgment of people, willingness to delegate, distant alliances and nearby attacks, and statecraft: he manages his territory and develops troop types and production on one side while recruiting historical heroes who come to him on the other. Externally, he unites the "Huaxia" forces of Qin, Han, Tang, Song, and Ming and contends over the long term with foreign powers such as the Xiongnu, Xianbei, Qiang, Jin, Liao, and Qing, ultimately building a vast realm, winning the game, and returning to the modern world with his memories. The book blends lord management, troop development, wars of supremacy, and a ensemble of historical figures; its battle scenes are grand and its cultivation and data settings detailed, making it one of the more representative early Chinese online novels of the eastern lord genre.