Speaking of Shaan VII, Krenville Quisa, Li Wei, as an outsider, felt a measure of admiration and respect for the man.
Even among the various biographies and unofficial histories about him that Li Wei had read during this journey south, condemnations of Shaan VII far outnumbered praise.
One book in particular, Collected Ravings of Shaan VII, spared no mockery in recounting his life, branding him the gravedigger of the Xiaen Dynasty and a monarch who destroyed his own nation.
It judged him to be a tyrant through and through—a madman who openly used the corpses of his own people to cast large-scale undead calamity spells and suppress slave uprisings.
Yet Li Wei had his own reading of the history recorded in the Chronicles of Shaan.
Looking across the history of the Xiaen Dynasty, one would find that by the time it fell into Shaan VII's hands, the rotten dynasty had already become a mess riddled with holes.
At the time, Shaan faced internal troubles such as Pashas carving up territory, factional strife among great clans, Mages controlling the government, and slave revolts. Externally, it still clung to Shaan's early policy of "grand unification." Its southern border had long since crossed Lake of Steam, and it was locked in an inseparable tangle of war with the border states of Shaar.
Multiple fronts, exceedingly long supply lines, and relentless internal erosion had turned the ancient kingdom of Shaan into a colossal beast ravaged by grave illness, one that could collapse headfirst at any moment and never rise again.
And at precisely such a time, Shaan VI suddenly died violently. Shaan VII, only fourteen years old at the time, was propped onto that throne already on the verge of collapse by a group of court Mages.
And just when the entire empire stood