Liang

Biodata

Geography and Locations

• Climate: Liang is bitterly cold and experiences frequent extreme weather. Most of its territory is also relatively dry; arson consequently carries heavy penalties 44 73.
• Capital: Tianjing is populous and prosperous. Hong Yan describes it as Liang’s foremost seat of civilization, contrasting it with the Eastern Frontier 8 75.

History

Rise and Aristocratic Expansion

Liang’s aristocratic power accumulated across four kings and more than eighty years. The reigning king had occupied the throne for almost thirty years, spending his first twenty-odd years fighting wars that required aristocratic support. His military successes brought hostages from numerous countries, but also strengthened the nobles on whom he depended 116.

War with Jin

Twelve years before the opening chapter, Liang defeated Great Jin. Jin ceded territory, paid enormous reparations, and subsequently supplied hostages, including Wu Youren. His father died while assisting Jin’s wartime logistics 1 7 78.

Liang officially maintained that it had withdrawn after accomplishing its punitive objectives, sparing ordinary people further suffering. The narrative instead explains that Liang had also been exhausted by the war: attempting to occupy all of Jin could have caused its own collapse 79.

By Wu Youren’s time at Red Pine, the countries had ceased hostilities and maintained reasonably decent diplomatic relations. Popular hostility toward Jin nevertheless remained intense, sustained in part by Liang’s heavy wartime casualties 33 79.

Government and Politics

Royal Succession

The aging crown prince seeks to seize the throne from his long-lived father. His support comes from the aristocratic faction associated with the queen. The reigning king, rather than the crown prince, established the New Army 116.

Military strength is an expectation of kingship. Nearly half of Liang’s successive rulers have been Great Knights; the current king’s grandfather died while attempting that advancement. Even a baronial family risks demotion if it fails to produce a Knight 170.

State Institutions

Knight Asset and Tax Proposal

• Initial proposal: Wu Youren suggests giving Knights land and businesses in return for service, using tax exemptions to attract their support to the court. Ailin’s family takes the idea seriously, while New Army commander Jeff questions him privately 107.
• Political mechanism: Wu argues that shared financial interests could unite Knights despite their existing patrons. He privately expects the policy to cause substantial upheaval rather than simply benefit Liang 107.
• Pilot program: Jeff later asks how to generate bottom-up resistance for the New Army’s program. Wu recommends secretly distributing money among Knights and Knight Apprentices so they can organize 147.

Military and Supernatural Power

Estimated Strength

• Combat coordination: Liang’s Knights demonstrate disciplined formation fighting against the Weird Race, using battle qi while maintaining protection for their own party 11.
• Frontier forces: The military includes dedicated units recruited from surrounding tribes 91.
• Weapons: Its forces and martial artists use pistols, Weird-Breaking Projectiles, heavy machine guns, and explosives alongside cultivated melee weapons 46 73 84.
• Ability Users: True Ability Users are considered more precious than Great Knights and enjoy higher social standing. An awakened Ability User Apprentice already possesses combat strength comparable to a Knight 73 74.
• Builders: Liang has developed construction-related Ability Users extensively. A guard claims that half its builders are proper Ability Users, while acknowledging Jin’s earlier role in developing this path 8 9.

Martial Education

Red Pine’s Scale and Training

• Campus and enrollment: Approximately two square kilometers, with 7,000–8,000 martial artists; around 90% are Knight Apprentices and 10% are Knights pursuing further study 13.
• Staffing: More than 2,000 teachers, over half above Knight rank, plus 3,000–4,000 maintenance and service workers 13.
• Study model: Training is largely self-directed, with public lectures, combat assignments, and a techniques hall rather than constant supervision 13.
• Costs: Liang covers the hostages’ basic room and board, but better food, blood food, private instruction, and sparring partners require additional payment 13.
• Restricted knowledge: Only Knight Apprentice techniques are openly sold at Red Pine. Advanced instruction requires other channels, such as taking a master or pledging allegiance to a state department 14.
• Foreign recognition: Jin values graduates of Liang’s academies, provided they possess an actual diploma rather than merely having attended 14.

Foreign Relations and Hostage Policy

Great Jin

• Hostage delegation: Jin supplies a roughly hundred-member Hostage Prince Corps. Liang regards a single prince as insufficient leverage over such a large country 159.
• Limited leverage: Despite its symbolic importance, the delegation is not realistically capable of determining Jin’s major national policies 119.
• Public humiliation: Hostage vehicles bear conspicuous markings, and guards wear identifying armbands. During celebrations, hostages can be pelted with stones and bricks; dodging may be punished as disrupting the ceremony 8 79.
• Internal division: Academic lessons praise Liang’s culture and power. Rewards of money or blood food encourage competition among the hostages, while Liang generally punishes their internal violence lightly 1 4.
• Academy admission: Liang offers thirty intermediate-academy places and declares that participants will fight the Weird Race, not other human nations 4.
• Royal marriage: Princess Yongning announces that she will screen Jin hostages as prospective husbands. Jin’s leaders hope a favored candidate could influence her on their country’s behalf 7.

Taowan

• Vassal and military ally: Taowan has fewer than approximately 500,000 inhabitants and sometimes contributes troops to Liang’s nearby wars. Its hostage arrangement is voluntary rather than the result of defeat 159.
• Junior status: Liang’s people generally regard Taowan favorably, but not as an equal. Taowan’s people are still outsiders rather than full members of Liang society 178 181.
• Threat of renewed war: Saina, a Taowan prince aligned with Liang’s crown prince, plans a spring attack on Jin. Wu Youren and Chen Quanxu conclude that the attack could draw Liang into war and give its nobles grounds to demand intervention 159 175.

Surrounding Tribes

• Earlier conflicts: Liang formerly captured members of surrounding tribes as slaves, provoking repeated campaigns with limited returns 91.
• Integration: Tribal migrants perform much of the exhausting, poorly paid labor that Liang’s citizens avoid. Their warriors also serve in the army, making the tribes important to both civilian and military life 91.
• Unequal resource control: Teli representatives state that their tribe must surrender most Weird items to Liang, while tribal fighters may retain acquisitions made inside Liang itself 93.
• Collective influence: Larger tribes organize loosely and can pressure the authorities into investigations, particularly when their fighters are needed against Weird threats 91.

Society and Economy

• Martial values: Strength and combat achievement carry enormous prestige. A thickset physique is a common masculine beauty ideal, reinforced by the demands of Liang’s cold climate 7 73.
• Gender expectations: Patriarchal attitudes remain deeply rooted despite the existence of female Knights. Warfare and killing are treated as men’s proper work, while supporting domestic tasks are associated with women 80.
• Adulthood: The legal age of adulthood is eighteen, although younger children commonly herd livestock and adolescents perform heavy labor 40.
• Gambling: Gambling is legal, and “ke stones” is a common game. Martial academies generally restrict excessive stakes rather than every form of gambling 115.
• Sugar: Domestic production is low, making sugar expensive and difficult to obtain. Martial artists prize it for rapidly relieving fatigue and restoring fighting strength 78.
• Vegetables: Vegetable consumption is not customary. Winter vegetables cost more than meat, making Wu Youren’s greenhouse economically unattractive despite his ability to afford it 119.

Weird Threats

Suotu and Bellflower Mountain

• Emergency mobilization: The military receives strict orders to eliminate the danger of a Weird Domain forming near Tianjing 72.
• Concentration of resources: As the Suotu crisis grows, troops, researchers, and Ability Users gather in the area 91.
• Bellflower Mountain expedition: Red Pine sends Hong Yan’s team into the dangerous domain, where the presence of the New Army also brings political friction 97.
• Containment: Following a chaotic escape from the domain, the military holds survivors for inspection before allowing them to leave 110.

Parasitic Weird Outbreak

• Spread: Infections appear at Suotu, Haicheng Martial Academy, and Jin Garden, raising fears of a deliberate attack 161.
• Diplomatic mistrust: Jin Garden rejects the Court of State Ceremonial’s offer to help an infected hostage, fearing that Liang’s personnel might destroy the body and erase evidence. Liang’s responsibility remains a suspicion, not an established fact 159.
• Investigation: The City Guard Bureau recruits academy assistance, and Keluoge’s team researches transfers between hosts 161 170.
• Commercial exposure: Manna and Luo Xi identify two infected people at the Yongning Chamber of Commerce, including a senior member, prompting competing demands over their custody and observation 170.