The countryside was broken. The plains that had once fed empires now stretched like charred skeletons, scattered with the blackened husks of villages, scorched harvest fields, and irrigation canals clogged with the dead. The war between Luo Wen and Wei Lian had left in its wake a desolate, hollow landscape: villages stripped of their youth, families cut in half, old men dragging themselves down the roads like shadows of the living.
Everywhere, peasant guerrillas sprang up like weeds after fire. They were fed by hunger, by rage, and by despair. Yet they lacked direction, they were sparks without flame: one band might ambush a convoy, another raid a tax collector, another vanish into the hills after harassing an imperial patrol. They burned bright for a moment and then were gone, as fleeting as smoke.
It was in this chaos that Xu Ping rose.
At first his force was no more than a flicker, a handful of villagers clutching sickles and hunting bows, determined to defend their homes. But as the months dragged on and the war between Luo Wen and Wei Lian swallowed city after city, his name began to spread like wildfire from village to village, until it became less a man's name than a banner whispered on the lips of the common folk.
The secret of his rise was not only the sword.
While Wei Lian clung to Guangling and Luo Wen expanded his dominion across the heartland, Xu Ping was building something else in the ruins—an authority not based on noble lineage or imperial decree, but on trust.
He understood what others refused to see: the people despised both sides. They cursed the Chancellor for his brutal levies and the merciless weight of his armies. They spat upon the nobles who still lived in abundance, feasting while demanding even more taxes from starving peasants. Where other guerrilla chiefs acted no better than bandits, Xu Ping imposed discipline as harsh and unyielding as iron.
In every village his men entered, looting was forbidden. The peasants gave grain or animals, yes, but at a fairer rate and always with something in return: protection from the imperial tax gatherers and reprieve from noble extortion. If a soldier under Xu Ping dared touch a woman or steal for himself, the punishment was swift and public—execution before the eyes of the very people they were meant to protect.
"The army does not exist to abuse the people," Xu Ping declared in every square and roadside camp. "The army is the people's shield."
Such words, backed by action, were rare in a time where violence had become law. And because they were rare, they took root.
Entire villages began to see in him not another marauder, but a guardian. Fathers gave their sons to his ranks, convinced that Xu Ping was something different from the lords who had betrayed them.
It was then that Xu Ping began to give shape to an idea—a theory that would one day echo like thunder across the land.
Villages lived on rumor, and Xu Ping turned rumor into a weapon sharper than any blade.
"Why do we suffer?" he would ask, standing before crowds of gaunt faces. "Why do our children die in wars of the nobles, while those same nobles gorge themselves at banquets, while they trade women like cattle and laugh over their cups of wine?"
He explained that Luo Wen and Wei Lian were, at their core, the same. Luo Wen was a usurper who crowned himself over corpses, leaning on a new nobility of generals and merchants fattened by his victories. Wei Lian proclaimed legitimacy only because her blood ran back to old aristocratic houses, as though birth alone could justify the chains on the people.
Neither, Xu Ping said, represented the peasantry.
"What is blood worth?" he shouted in burnt-out villages, his voice carrying over the rubble. "Does it feed you? Does it heal your wounds? The blood of nobles and emperors is as red as ours—but they spill ours to preserve theirs. Bloodline is nothing but a chain. Break it!"
Those words spread like wildfire from lip to lip, until soon his followers called themselves not brigands, but the People's Army.
Until then, peasant guerrillas had been scattered and divided. Some fought Luo Wen's troops, some attacked local nobles, some survived as bandits. Xu Ping understood that to truly threaten the Empire, he had to turn those scattered sparks into a firestorm.
His method was twofold: force and propaganda.
He struck first at the strongest bandit chiefs along the trade routes. He led lightning raids against their camps, and when victory was his, he gave them a choice: bend the knee, accept his discipline, or die. Many, astonished by his organization and his growing support, chose to join. The stubborn perished, and their men became soldiers of the People's Army.
At the same time, he unleashed an army of scribes, literate monks, and wandering preachers. They carried pamphlets written in simple, burning language—words that denounced noble cruelty, reminded the people of Luo Wen's forced levies, and called for the peasants to rule themselves. In village squares, children read the words aloud to illiterate crowds, their voices bright and defiant against the silence of oppression.
"The people suffer, the people bleed, the people must decide their destiny!"
This cry became the rallying flame of the countryside.
With his foundation built, Xu Ping began striking blows that could not be ignored.
To the north, he intercepted an imperial convoy of a hundred grain carts destined for Guangling. Instead of hoarding the spoils, he distributed much of it among starving villages. His prestige soared overnight. To the south, he stormed a small garrison belonging to a noble who still squeezed taxes from peasants, and he handed the land back to the villagers.
These acts set him apart from any common warlord. He was no longer a bandit chief but a leader with a purpose.
Rumors swelled that he now commanded thousands, his army divided into companies with captains and lieutenants. His forces included peasants with spears, deserters from Wei Lian who refused to follow her across the sea, and even former officers who saw in Xu Ping not chaos, but redemption.
Meanwhile, in Guangling, Luo Wen listened with a mask of disdain.
"Flies," he muttered when the first reports arrived—convoys ambushed, loyalist villages attacked.
But his old general Han Qiu leaned forward and said gravely:
"Majesty, flies may become a swarm. Xu Ping is no common outlaw. His discipline, his propaganda—they make him something far more dangerous. He is an idea."
Luo Wen's lips tightened. He knew better than most that ideas could outlast armies, and that sometimes words cut deeper than steel.
In the space of mere months, Xu Ping achieved the unthinkable: he unified almost every peasant guerrilla worth naming. Where once there were dozens of wolf packs prowling alone, now there was a scattered but coordinated army, its camps stretching through mountain passes and forest strongholds, tied together by messengers and signals.
Every recruit took an oath: never steal from the people, never abuse women or children, fight only against the Empire and the nobles. The punishment for breaking the oath was death, carried out swiftly and without mercy.
This iron discipline gave Xu Ping a reputation that even nobles whispered about in fear. For the first time, villages welcomed an army without trembling.
Nobles fled to imperial cities, abandoning their manors and their fields. The peasants, left behind, rallied around Xu Ping, who presented himself not as emperor or lord, but as the arm of their pain and the voice of their anger.
His speeches, written down and spread in countless copies, hammered the same point home:
"The inheritance of power through blood is a lie. While the people starve, nobles feast. While families perish, they abduct daughters for slaves and wives. Luo Wen rules by cruelty, Wei Lian claims titles by lineage. Enough of bloodlines! Enough of usurpers! Power belongs to those who labor, to those who bleed for the soil."
It was a message so simple, so sharp, that it burned its way into the heart of the countryside.
At last, in his main camp, a red banner was raised. Upon it was a symbol: a plow crossed with a spear. Thousands gathered beneath it. Xu Ping had done more than gather men—he had given the peasantry an identity, an army, and a cause.
Villages no longer called him lord, nor emperor. They called him the People's Guide.
The inner roads ceased to belong to the Empire. Convoys were ambushed, isolated garrisons abandoned their posts, and smaller cities began to grow restless, fearing their own peasants sympathized more with Xu Ping than with the Emperor enthroned in Guangling.
His growth was so swift that even on Wei Lian's islands, exiled nobles spoke his name. Some dismissed him as a rabble-rouser, but others began to worry: if he truly united the people against nobility itself, not even a thousand years of lineage would save them. Yet most took grim satisfaction—better Luo Wen bleed in the fields than turn his gaze upon them too soon.
In Guangling, Luo Wen finally understood. Xu Ping was not a bandit. He was not a passing rebel. He was a movement that threatened to rip out the very roots of noble power.
And though the Emperor would not admit it aloud, he knew the truth: Xu Ping heralded a new kind of war. Not a war of fortresses, nor of sieges, nor even of crowns, but a war of legitimacy itself—where swords mattered, but words could move nations.