📖 Origin Story
Thirty years ago, when the Shuntian Dynasty was plagued by frequent internal rebellions, the northern demon tribes stirred, and the eastern Canglang Tribe invaded the borders year after year. The Yan Family Army, guarding the northeast border under the command of old general "Yan Polu," achieved seven consecutive victories with just three thousand iron cavalry, beating the Canglang Tribe so badly they didn't dare look south for a decade.
However, his merits overshadowed the throne. Slanderous officials at court falsely accused the Yan family of colluding with foreign tribes to plot a rebellion. The sixteen-year-old newly crowned emperor, out of fear, secretly ordered the Embroidered Uniform Guards (Jinyiwei) to launch a night raid on the Yan estate, slaughtering the entire family. That night, Yan Polu's eldest son, "Yan Lie," led his elite guards in a bloody breakout. Three hundred death-sworn soldiers escorted the Yan family's youngest son, "Yan Pojun," out of the capital.
Met by loyal former subordinates at the border, Yan Pojun arrived at Split-Horse Plain, the strategic pass the Yan Family Army had guarded for generations. Looking at the vast grasslands and ruined beacon towers, he burned all the medals and command flags issued by the court and swore to the heavens: "From now on, the Yan family bows to no Emperor; we only defend this land."
He built a crude stone fort on the Split-Horse Plain, taking in all border army deserters abandoned by the court, refugees whose villages were slaughtered by foreign tribes, and martial artists with nowhere else to go. Over thirty years, the stone fort expanded into a mighty pass, and the three thousand remnant soldiers multiplied into tens of thousands. The name "Liaoyuan Spear Fort" struck terror into the Canglang Tribe and cost the Shuntian court its sleep.
The current Fort Master, "Yan Wugui," is Yan Pojun's eldest grandson. He inherited his grandfather's iron blood but also bears a deeper contradiction—his grandmother was a princess of the Canglang Tribe.
🏔️ Geography and Main Locations
Split-Horse Plain: A vast grassland on the northeast border of the Shuntian Dynasty, located at the junction of the Yan Mountains and the eastern steppes. The land is barren, filled with blowing sand, where only the hardy Split-Horse Grass can grow. This is the inevitable path for the Canglang Tribe to head south and the battlefield where Liaoyuan Spear Fort has stood for thirty years. Rusted arrowheads, shattered armor pieces, and half-buried white bones can be seen everywhere on the plain.
Liaoyuan Spear Fort: Built on "Eagle Beak Cliff," the only high ground on Split-Horse Plain, it is a military fortress constructed from massive black stones. The city walls are twelve yards high, bristling with outward-pointing spear tips, looking from afar like a crouching hedgehog. The fort is divided into an outer fort and an inner fort:
Outer Fort: The residential area for civilians and new recruits, featuring training grounds, stables, blacksmiths, and granaries. The streets are narrow and straight to facilitate urban warfare. The walls are carved with the names of those who died in past battles.
Inner Fort: The residence of the Yan family and core generals. In the center stands a three-yard-high stone tower called "Homesick Tower." It is said that Yan Pojun climbed this tower every day to gaze south, never stepping foot in the Central Plains again until his death.
Earth Fire Grotto: A natural karst cave beneath the Spear Fort with an underground magma river, blisteringly hot year-round. This is the secret forging ground for the Fire Qilin Spears and where disciples meditate in seclusion to cultivate the "Blazing Plain Intent." The rock walls are carved with the spear technique insights of past ancestors.
Smoke Beacon Towers: Seven beacon towers are scattered across the Split-Horse Plain, arranged like a seven-star constellation, the furthest capable of seeing the Spear Fort from a hundred miles away. Food, water, and arrows are buried beneath each tower, serving as the fort's first line of defense. The tower guards are mostly injured veteran soldiers, spending their days accompanied by wind and sand.
⚔️ Core Martial Arts System
The martial arts system of Liaoyuan Spear Fort is centered entirely on battlefield slaughter. It seeks no flashy moves, only practical combat effectiveness. Every move has been tempered in mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
📖 Inner Cultivation (Heart Sutra)
Blazing Plain Intent (Blazing Plain Intent)
The foundational inner art of Liaoyuan Spear Fort, reportedly enlightened by Yan family ancestors on the battlefield. This art uses the aura of slaughter as a trigger, transforming the anger, battle intent, and death wish on the battlefield into inner energy. When circulated, qi and blood surge like magma, body temperature spikes, and the air around the spear tip distorts like fire.
This art has three realms:
First Realm "Sparks": Inner energy is newly born, bursting like sparks to unleash terrifying force in an instant. Cultivators at this realm can kill enemies with a single strike on the battlefield.
Second Realm "Wildfire": Inner energy flows continuously, growing stronger as the battle progresses, like wildfire spreading across a plain. Cultivators here can charge in and out of enemy armies repeatedly, fighting more fiercely the longer they battle.
Third Realm "Sky-Burning": The legendary realm where inner energy materializes into actual flames. A single spear thrust turns a hundred-yard radius into scorched earth. Only the ancestor Yan Polu ever reached this realm.
The price of this cultivation is a shortened lifespan, and the practitioner's personality gradually becomes fierce and quick-tempered. Many veterans die in their later years as inner energy backfires, burning their internal organs to ashes. A saying in the fort goes: "The fire of the blazing plain burns the enemy, but also burns oneself."
Flame-Treading Steps (Flame-Treading Steps)
Footwork designed specifically for charging enemy formations. It does not seek lightness or grace, only an unstoppable momentum. When executed, the feet stomp the ground with immense force, leaving blackened footprints with every step, as if marching on flames.
This movement skill has three realms:
First Realm "Treading Formations": Allows stable advancement amidst chaotic enemy ranks without the formation being broken.
Second Realm "Treading Enemies": Allows advancing by stepping on enemies' shields, shoulders, or even heads, moving as if walking through an empty land.
Third Realm "Treading Flames": The legendary realm. Sparks erupt where the feet land, and every step carries a scorching aura that forces surrounding enemies back with waves of heat.
Iron Shirt Body Hardening (Iron Shirt Body Hardening)
A mandatory body-hardening art for fort disciples. Using special medicinal baths combined with repeated beatings, the skin and muscles become like iron armor.
This art has three realms:
First Realm "Iron Skin": Skin as tough as leather, capable of resisting ordinary sword and saber slashes.
Second Realm "Iron Muscle": Muscles as hard as wood and stone, capable of resisting smashing blows from heavy weapons.
Third Realm "Iron Bone": Bones as hard as refined steel, capable of withstanding a battering ram without breaking. Cultivators at this level are called "Iron Bone Generals," of which there are only a handful in the fort.
Those who achieve mastery develop dull, iron-gray skin that ordinary arrows cannot pierce. The cost is that the skin gradually loses sensation, and their appearance becomes rough and ferocious.
⚔️ Main Weapons and Techniques
Thirty-Six Forms of Blazing Plain (Thirty-Six Forms of Blazing Plain)
Battlefield spear techniques executed with the Fire Qilin Spear. Comprising thirty-six forms, every move is designed to kill. The spear play is devoid of flashy tricks, focusing on the five keywords: "Thrust, Flick, Sweep, Smash, Burst."
This technique has three realms:
First Realm "Thirty-Six Forms": Can fully execute the thirty-six basic spear forms, each with a clear killing objective.
Second Realm "Spear Intent": Not rigidly bound to forms; the spear follows the mind, and where the intent goes, the spear reaches. Cultivators here can adapt freely on the battlefield.
Third Realm "Blazing Plain": The legendary realm. A single thrust is like wildfire on a plain, enveloping a radius of several yards in its spear momentum.
The strongest three forms are:
34th Form "Burning the Linked Camps": One thrust transforms into nine spear shadows, attacking nine vital points simultaneously.
35th Form "City-Burning Throw": Hurls the Fire Qilin Spear with full force to pierce the enemy formation, capable of penetrating three layers of iron armor.
36th Form "Blazing Plain Hundred Rends": The legendary ultimate form, requiring burning one's life force to execute. The power of a single thrust can withstand an army of ten thousand. Only the ancestor Yan Polu used this form in his final battle.
Fort Master | Yan Wugui
About forty years old, tall and burly with a resolute face. A knife scar runs from the corner of his left eye down to his chin. He is taciturn but has eyes as sharp as an eagle's. He is the eldest grandson of Yan Pojun. He followed his father into battle at sixteen and succeeded as Fort Master at twenty.
Yan Wugui's spear skills are unmatched in the fort, having reached the "Wildfire" realm, though he has never shown his full strength. His biggest secret is his lineage—his grandmother was a Canglang princess, meaning half his blood is that of a plainsman. Whenever the Canglang Tribe invades, he is always the first to charge the walls, as if trying to prove his loyalty.
He never mentions the imperial court, but a painting hangs in his study—a scene of a young general being enfeoffed at court. That spirited youth in the painting is the father he never met, "Yan Lie." It is said that when breaking out of the siege, Yan Lie stayed behind alone to cover his brother Yan Pojun's escape and was hacked to pieces by the Jinyiwei.
Young Master | Yan Ming
Yan Wugui's only son, merely seventeen. Unlike his father's ruggedness, Yan Ming is delicate and thin, frail and sickly since childhood, deemed unsuitable to practice the fierce Liaoyuan spear arts. Introverted, he loves reading and painting, often spending entire days in the Homesick Tower.
However, during a surprise attack by the Canglang Tribe on a beacon tower, Yan Ming was forced to fight and unleashed a martial art completely different from the Yan family spear—his spear momentum was as light as rain, using finesse to deflect fierce attacks, with every thrust accurately piercing the gaps in armor. This was the "Rain Striking Plantain Spear" he self-taught from a fragmented scroll in the Yan family library, rumored to be another lost lineage of the Yan family.
Yan Ming's awakening sparked massive controversy within the Spear Fort—traditionalists consider him heretical, while reformists view him as the fort's future. His relationship with his father also became subtle and tense because of this.
Iron-Blooded Drillmaster | Shi Meng
Nicknamed "Iron Stone," about fifty years old, he is the head drillmaster of the Spear Fort, responsible for training recruits. Originally a veteran of the Yan Family Army, he followed Yan Pojun through half a lifetime of bloody battles, bearing thirty-seven scars. Shi Meng is brutal, frequently beating and cursing recruits, but every recruit he ever called "trash" eventually became the fort's most reliable warrior.
He has cultivated the Iron Shirt to perfection; his skin is dark as iron, and ordinary swords only leave white marks. Shi Meng never uses a spear; his weapon is a 300-pound iron shield, using it to clear paths on the battlefield, crushing enemy formations like a bulldozer.
He is extremely strict with Yan Ming, but everyone can see the deep affection beneath the veteran's harshness—because Yan Ming looks increasingly like his old comrade, the uncle Yan Ming never met, "Yan Pozhen."
Canglang Princess | Arslan
Yan Wugui's mother, now in her sixties, the most mysterious existence in the Spear Fort. She came to Split-Horse Plain with Yan Pojun thirty years ago and never left the inner fort since. She rarely appears, but her opinion is crucial in every major decision of the fort.
Arslan is the daughter of the previous Khan of the Canglang Tribe, married into the Yan family as a political pawn. Her marriage to Yan Pojun began as politics but ended in true love—when Yan Pojun was hunted by the court, she led Canglang cavalry to cover the retreat of the Yan family remnants.
Today, her brother is the father of the current Canglang King, and her nephew is the current Canglang King. Whenever the Canglang Tribe and the Spear Fort clash, she stands silently on the wall, watching. No one knows what she is thinking.
Shuntian Dynasty: The relationship between Liaoyuan Spear Fort and the court is one of "coexisting blood feud and dependency." Thirty years ago, the court massacred the Yan family, an irreconcilable blood feud. But the fort has never publicly raised the banner of rebellion; nominally, they still call themselves "subjects of Shuntian," merely "not subject to court control." The court's attitude is equally contradictory—viewing them as a thorn in the eye, yet forced to rely on them to block the Canglang Tribe. The new emperor once secretly ordered the Jinyiwei to "eliminate them when the opportunity arises," but frontline generals know: without the Spear Fort, Split-Horse Plain would have fallen long ago.
Wuxiang Temple: Good relations. High monks of Wuxiang Temple have traveled north multiple times to perform rites for fallen soldiers and provide the fort with medicine and food aid. Abbot Duchen once stated publicly: "The Yan family has been loyal for generations. Suffering this disaster is truly the court's fault." Though Monk Xuanbei advocated a crusade against the Spear Fort, Duchen always suppressed it. Yan Wugui highly respects Wuxiang Temple, once saying privately: "Among all Buddhists in the world, only Wuxiang Temple remembers us border folks."
Shushan Sect: Friendly relations. Generations of Shushan sword cultivators have traveled north to assist the Spear Fort in defending against demon invasions, forging deep camaraderie on the battlefield. Shushan's Sect Leader, Perfected Baimei, was an old friend of Yan Wugui's father and still maintains correspondence. Shushan respects the Spear Fort's choice to separate from the court, considering them "loyal subjects forced to rebel" rather than true traitors. Yan Wugui once said: "The true righteous path in the world belongs only to Shushan and Wuxiang Temple. But Wuxiang Temple has fallen into the court's trap; only Shushan remains the Shushan of the past."
Tiandao Alliance: Indirect business relations. The Spear Fort needs weapons, grain, and medicine, and the Tiandao Alliance's smuggling network can bypass the court's blockade to deliver these to the border. Ninth Master Shen's attitude toward the Spear Fort is "business is business," avoiding politics. Iron Lion once privately stated that if the Tiandao Alliance were still what it used to be, he would transport supplies for the fort for free. Deaf Granny regularly informs the fort of the court's movements through the Tianji Pavilion—a favor in return for Yan Pojun saving her life years ago.
Blood God Sect: Mortal enemies. The Blood God Sect needs massive amounts of living human blood to cultivate blood arts, and border refugees and injured soldiers are their favorite targets. The Blood God Sect repeatedly sent people to infiltrate Split-Horse Plain to abduct people; when discovered by the Spear Fort, bloody battles erupted. Yan Wugui personally slew a Blood God Sect elder and hung his corpse on a beacon tower as a warning. The Blood God Sect Leader declared: "Liaoyuan Spear Fort will surely be burned to ashes."
Canglang Tribe (Blue Wolf): Three generations of bloody battles, a tangle of grievances. The war between the Canglang Tribe and the Spear Fort has lasted thirty years, with countless casualties on both sides. Yet, the current Canglang King, Temujin, and Yan Wugui are actually cousins—Yan Wugui's mother is Temujin's aunt. Temujin once sent a letter to Yan Wugui offering: "As long as the Spear Fort surrenders, your independent status will be guaranteed." Yan Wugui burned the letter in front of the messenger, replying with only one sentence: "The spears of the Yan family are pointed only at enemies, never at our own people." But when he burned the letter, his fingers trembled slightly—because the last line of the letter read: "Auntie... is she well?"
Demon Tribes (North): Hostile. The northern demon tribes covet the lands of the Central Plains and repeatedly attempt to breach Split-Horse Plain. The war with the demon tribes is even more tragic than with the Canglang Tribe—demons don't care about formations or rules; there is only endless slaughter. Yan Wugui's left cheek scar was left during a fight with a demon general. In recent years, the demon tribes and the Canglang Tribe have secretly allied, forming a pincer attack on the Spear Fort from north and south, which is Yan Wugui's biggest headache.