The Romantic General

The Romantic General (originally titled The Ranking of Peerless Beauties) is a long-form alternate-history web novel by Qiyue Shengwo, first serialized and completed on Zongheng Chinese, totaling more than 5.5 million characters. The protagonist, Yi Han, is a transmigrator from Earth born into an alternate world where martial families hold power; he is the grandson of the Yi family general Yi Tianya and possesses "the talent of the qilin." From childhood he has a poor reputation in his mountain village, constantly stirring up trouble, and his name as a womanizer spreads throughout the region. After leaving home, he travels to Jinling and other places, encounters lantern festivals and poetry gatherings, and through one romantic entanglement after another sees through many noble young ladies disguised as men, gradually becoming drawn into a larger power game. As events unfold, starting from his status as a servant in the Yi household, he is swept into the military and political struggles among the Central Plains, Western Xia, and the Kingdom of Zijin; he fights alongside the remarkable woman Ning Xue at the Western Prince's mansion against the Northern Ao forces, and gradually grows into a renowned general through battlefield campaigns and court intrigue. The work uses "battlefield hegemony" as its skeleton and "romantic entanglements" as its flesh, advancing the plot through Yi Han's emotional ties with numerous female characters such as Li Xuanguan, Ning Xue, Wangshu, Lan'er, and Mutong; the prose incorporates traditional cultural symbols such as music, chess, calligraphy, painting, poetry, and classical allusions. The overall style is light and wish-fulfillment oriented, with a heavy proportion of romance, while the intrigue and warfare mostly serve to connect the story.