Embers of the Glorious Tang Dynasty
He began with nothing but a knife, and every piece of equipment depended on fortune’s drop. Liu Ji’s journey through worlds started with a single short blade. It was the eleventh year of the Tianbao era, and the Great Tang Dynasty had reached its zenith. Yet in the afterglow of this golden age, the grand edifice teetered on the brink of collapse. In such turbulent times, where should a man of iron and blood set his heart? When there is no path, carve one out with your own hands! From Anxi to Tubo, from the Central Riverlands to Khorasan, Baghdad, Syria, the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean—the road ran ever westward. Our goal is… to have no cavities!
Embers of the Glorious Tang Dynasty
“Fifth Son, is the pain severe?”
At the sound of the voice, Liu Ji snapped out of his stupor. The corner of his mouth twitched into a somewhat forced smile.
“It’s nothing, I can manage.”
The two spoke in the official tongue—the so-called He Luo accent. With his experience of two lifetimes, Liu Ji knew this pronunciation was neither the Mandarin of later ages, nor did it bear any trace of the local dialects of Shaanxi or Henan, yet it was the language that had flourished across China for a thousand years.
He tightened his sheepskin robe, gripping the walking stick firmly in his hand as he followed in the footsteps of his companion along the winding mountain trail. He trod carefully, for not far to the side yawned a deep river gorge; a single misstep down the jagged, rocky slope would leave his body a battered, bloodied ruin, beyond the help of even the gods.
It was only in those brief moments when he lifted his head that his gaze lingered, lost, on the vast glaciers stretching nearby and the towering, snow-capped peaks in the distance, reaching into the clouds. They looked little different from how they would after a thousand years—he could recognize them at a glance. The tallest among them was the peak that, in a later age, would be known as K2.
The world’s second highest mountain, rising 8,611 meters above sea level.
How had all this come to pass? Merely three days earlier, he had been a soldier of the Republic entrusted with a special mission. Outwardly, he was to join a delegation from a military enterprise, but in truth, he w
