Great Qian

Biodata

History

Founding and Unification

Great Qian was founded in the third year after Great Jin’s collapse. Meng Jiuchuan, a man from Blazing Summer, defeated three regional lords, occupied the imperial palace, and renamed the capital Youjing City. The Imperial Astronomical Bureau’s Grand Astrologer proposed Qian, meaning heaven, to present Jiuchuan’s authority as bestowed by Heaven 211.

Jiuchuan had acted on Fang Zelin’s advice and received his help. Visitors from another world also supported the conquest: Northern Liang’s envoys credited them with burning enemy provisions, fighting without fear of death, and enabling rapid unification. Unlike many founding emperors, Jiuchuan did not execute the meritorious officials who had helped establish his dynasty 224 362 368.

Great Qian continued campaigning against surrounding vassal states after its foundation. These wars caused substantial casualties, including among transported prisoners, but ended with the neighboring states submitting. Officials then opened government roads through previously obstructed mountain and marsh routes 213 214.

Early Prosperity

Within ten years of its founding, Great Qian’s strength and public welfare had attracted Northern Liang’s attention. Although Northern Liang was several times larger, it dispatched envoys to study the younger dynasty’s government. A reopened road supported diplomatic contact and trade 214 215.

The early government steadily improved farmland, livestock breeding, waterways, and roads. Visitors from another world served throughout the administration, helping implement policies that infringed on established gentry interests. Northern Liang’s envoys recognized that copying the policies would be difficult without comparable support inside their own government 224 268.

Decades later, Zhang Weichu and Judge Wen described Great Qian as a genuine prosperous age. Repeated bumper harvests, irrigation works, and agricultural instruction improved living conditions, while strict treatment of martial vendettas reduced killings 335.

Regional Supremacy

After more than eight hundred years, Great Qian had become the strongest of over a dozen surrounding dynasties. Its ships reached those countries, its envoys served abroad, and neighboring rulers studied its institutions. Several nearby states had undergone repeated dynastic changes while Great Qian remained intact 374.

Its endurance did not prevent internal decay. Official families accumulated deeply interconnected influence over centuries, making it almost impossible for ordinary people to challenge abuses. Zhou Yongling, despite holding office as a commandery governor, could neither enter the central government nor meaningfully reform it 379 391 394.

Rebellion and Collapse

By the dynasty’s final period, hereditary privilege had blocked ordinary people’s advancement, regional power holders pursued private interests, and imperial authority had weakened for a century. The emperor feared that acting against one entrenched faction would provoke the others into rebellion 404.

At the beginning of the tenth year of the Wanqing era, thirteen rebel armies rose amid accumulated resentment and demonic interference. Some belonged to commandery governors. Neighboring dynasties secretly supplied weapons and grain, hoping eventually to seize Great Qian’s wealthy territories 407.

Prince Pingshan’s army grew to seven hundred thousand and besieged Youjing City. Great Qian had already lost its elite force and loyal general Wang Tian following betrayal at Falling Cloud Slope. Mu Huan refused to conscript civilians for the capital’s defense, believing their involvement could not change the outcome 410 416.

Fang Zelin arrived to honor Jiuchuan’s request that he protect worthy descendants if the dynasty fell. He explicitly refused to preserve Great Qian itself, explaining that its allotted reign had ended and that its fall reflected the people’s will 414 417 418.

In the eleventh year of Jingyun, Prince Pingshan captured Youjing City. The imperial family died by poison in the Heavenly Emolument Pavilion, and Prince Pingshan established Shang. Fang Zelin burned their bodies after Pingshan’s subordinates proposed burial in a desolate location; Pingshan subsequently ordered that the emperor’s death be publicly attributed to the fire 419 420.

Territory and Important Locations

• Great Qian’s surrounding region originally contained mountains, marshes, miasma, venomous insects, and numerous spirits, leaving local cultivation sects exposed to frequent battles 217.
• By its final period, its territory was exceptionally vast. Twenty-eight particularly wealthy commanderies and counties each produced tax revenue comparable to an entire neighboring country’s annual revenue 403 407.
• Neighboring dynasties seized prosperous prefectures during the collapse, leaving Shang with less territory than Great Qian had possessed 416 421 432.

Government and Society

Administration and Law

• Otherworldly officials: Visitors from another world held positions throughout the country, reducing local resistance to national policies. Later accounts identify the early leadership and its many professional specialists as people from Earth 224 421.
• Martial regulation: Martial arts remained legal, but the government dealt strictly with private vendettas and killings. This helped distinguish legitimate chivalry from the armed banditry common under the previous dynasty 335.
• Shadow Guard: Its minister reported that overseas visitors intended to learn Immortal Methods and use them in a future invasion 366.
• Diplomatic screening: Envoys stationed abroad verified visitors’ identities. Entry generally favored people with wealth or influence, though payment eventually made access easier 374.
• Late hereditary privilege: Offices and influence became effectively hereditary, while interconnected regional elites obstructed reform and weakened central control 379 404.

Education and Public Welfare

• Academies and moral instruction: Great Qian built academies and promoted books on propriety, righteousness, integrity, shame, and morality. Daoists credited these measures with making upright disciples easier to recruit 346.
• Agriculture: Farmland improvements, irrigation construction, planned livestock breeding, and instruction in farming and animal husbandry supported repeated good harvests 268 335.
• Transport and infrastructure: Officials cleared waterways and repaired roads, while later generations developed bridge-building, road-building, shipbuilding, and papermaking 268 421.
• Waterborne commerce: Because much Earth technology could not be reproduced, Great Qian relied heavily on rivers and sea routes, developing ships far beyond those of its neighbors 374.

Human Race Karmic Fortune

Heavenly Blessing

Great Qian’s extraordinary fortune came from a prayer to Heaven rather than ordinary territorial expansion. Zhenke explained that Fang Zelin’s prayer secured a blessing for its emperor and extended the dynasty’s reign to a thousand years. Judge Wen confirmed that the same span appeared in underworld records 260 335 360.

• Exceptional density: A Northern Liang Daoist judged its fortune stronger than a dynasty would normally possess 224.
• Celestial sign: Great Qian’s Purple Tetrarch Star shone brilliantly beside Northern Liang’s fading star 268.
• Deterrence against spirits: Strong fortune made nearby spirits uneasy and encouraged them to leave; weakening fortune allowed them to return 224.
• Imperial protection: The reigning emperor’s fortune made ordinary demons difficult to approach and could alert him to nearby concealed beings with Law Power. It offered no equivalent warning against people without Law Power 366.
• Not unconditional immortality: Fang Zelin stated that better government might have prolonged the dynasty by another hundred and twenty years, but its descendants had failed to preserve public support 418.

Fragmentation and Predation

• Popular resentment and rebellion broke the unified fortune into fragments, allowing demons to seize it with less risk of backlash 403 407.
• Great Qian’s thousand-year accumulation attracted demons from overseas and elsewhere. Even a small portion could grant centuries of cultivation 403 409.
• Overseas Aquatic Race members planned to flood its cities and divide the released fortune 395 410.
• Daoist defenders preserved most of the scattered fortune despite some losses. Their task was to protect it until a new dynasty could gather it again—not necessarily to preserve Great Qian’s throne 410.

Relations with Cultivators

Local Sects

Great Qian’s early cultivation community was weaker than Northern Liang’s. Frequent supernatural conflicts, losses dating to Great Zhou, and stolen cultivation-world fortune had impeded its development. Northern Liang’s cultivators believed their Great Qian counterparts still had only two generations of disciples 217 249 277.

• Jade Void Mountain, Jade Willow Mountain, and Ancient Cloud Temple joined other sects in guarding the country’s fortune during its collapse 410.
• The long peaceful reign improved recruitment and gave disciples time to cultivate instead of constantly fighting demons 346 409 427.
• Demon-Slaying Gourds, refined by Fang Zelin, enabled disciples to kill powerful demons during the final crisis. Not every cultivator possessed one, despite rumors among the Aquatic Race 410 427.
• Daoist Lü refined two copper coins using the presence of Great Qian’s people, emperors, and dynasty. During the coastal attack, one manifested a golden imperial palace above the waves, restraining the Aquatic Race 411.

Important Figures

• Meng Jiuchuan — Founder and Fang Zelin’s old friend. He left Fang a personal letter and entrusted his descendants’ possible rescue to him 362 414.
• Fang Zelin — Helped bring the dynasty into existence and obtain its blessing, but distinguished protecting innocent descendants from perpetuating a failed government 260 417 418.
• Mu Huan — Final emperor; unable to overcome entrenched factions or locate the immortal associated with his ancestor. He refused to make civilians die defending the capital 404 416.
• Wang Tian — Loyal frontier general who repeatedly aided the capital before dying following betrayal at Falling Cloud Slope 416.
• Zhou Yongling — Commandery governor whose experience exposed the gulf between Great Qian’s prestigious reputation and its corrupt central institutions 391 394.
• Prince Pingshan — Rebel leader who captured Youjing City and founded Shang 416 420.

Legacy

• Regional institutional influence: Neighboring dynasties adopted academies and largely abolished internal travel permits under Great Qian’s influence. Three had survived more than three hundred years while remaining prosperous, though copying Great Qian did not guarantee survival: Great Yu fell in less than a century 374.
• A durable material foundation: Shang inherited advanced technologies, extensive infrastructure, and professional knowledge. These foundations remained valuable even after war and territorial losses 421.
• A benchmark for later rulers: Prince Pingshan regarded surpassing Great Qian as requiring the conquest of all surrounding dynasties 432.
• A disputed immortal connection: Foreign envoys and later travelers often dismissed Jiuchuan’s immortal guidance as a claim invented to legitimize rebellion. Fang Zelin’s own testimony confirms that their friendship and his involvement were real 224 374 418 460.