Chasing the Invaders

Chasing the Invaders is a long-form web novel by the online author Chenmo de Ayu, and its story begins with a time-travel premise. The protagonist, Liu Feng, arrives in a precarious ancient world carrying the memories of a morally ambiguous past life, and grows up as a thirteen-year-old orphan in a remote mountain village. Early in the book, a conversation in which a Daoist priest denounces someone as a demonic aberration hints at the situation: the Hu have overrun the Central Plains, the order of things is overturned, and the people are suffering. The world has already fallen into ruin, yet this chaos calls for an "aberration" to stir it up—and Liu Feng happens to be seen as that troublemaker. He refuses to accept it, impatiently protesting that he is in fact a time traveler. From the volume "Steel Weapons Enter the Dream" onward, the story unfolds as Liu Feng leaves the mountain village and plunges into an age of chaos where Hu and Han intermingle and armor and weapons clash: on one side a dark era of encroaching powerful neighbors and displaced common folk, on the other a youth's struggle to rise from nothing and fight his way forward step by step. Built on the conventions of web serialization, the novel is known for its brisk narrative pace, humorous voice, and hard-hitting fight scenes, carrying the central thread of how a time traveler makes his way in an age of foreign rule and how he hunts down invaders in the cracks between powers. The writing is rough but forceful, suited to readers who enjoy underdog rise and heroes of chaotic times.