The Round-Faced Girl

Central Tongye Continent.

It should have been a fine season of rain nourishing a hundred grains, clear and bright. But as in the year before, no one picked the tender, silken toon shoots before the rains. Countless lush green tea mountains were growing desolate and overrun with weeds. In homes rich and poor alike, not a trace of fragrant pre-rain spring tea remained.

Northern Jin Kingdom had known peace for too long and, unfortunately, occupied ground armies had to fight over. In the past, eight hundred li of Pine Needle Lake and the Jinhuang Mountain God Mansion had stood between it and the Yao family border army's iron cavalry of the Great Quan Dynasty, and the two had lived in relative peace. Then the heavens changed. Every clever alliance and every earnest effort at good governance vanished like clouds before the eyes. Northern Jin was a kingdom in name alone, its ten thousand li of mountains and rivers shattered. Southern Qi, north of the Great Quan Dynasty, fared little better. That left only Great Quan, whose emperor had not appeared in ages. A feudal king governed in his stead while the Empress advised from behind a curtain, and they still fought the Demon Race Army from the Savage World. Yet victory was hopeless. They retreated step by step, and fewer than one in ten of the Yao family's border cavalry remained.

Southern Qi's old capital had become the camp of a Tuoyue Mountain army tent. The Great Quan Dynasty had also lost more than half its territory, and its border army had been all but wiped out. Troops from the various prefectures could only withdraw to defend the Imperial Capital Region. Word was that once the famous Mirage City fell, the army tent would move there.

When the Savage World's