Nine Phoenixes Arrive at the Throne

Five hundred years after the Great Gan Dynasty collapsed with a thunderous crash, powerful ministers usurped power, feudal warlords carved the land apart, and the world was torn into ten kingdoms and dozens of states. For more than a hundred years, war never ceased; fertile fields turned to scorched earth, the people were scattered, ritual and music collapsed, and society fell into ruin.

During a flight for their lives, the wandering Taoist Master Zixu saved a fleeing woman who was pregnant with a child. Within a secret realm, the Purple Tenuity Star shone with brilliant radiance, dragon roars and phoenix cries echoed through the valley, and countless strange beasts bowed in worship as Wu Jiufeng was born under destiny’s mandate.

Heaven’s decree proclaimed that she was the one meant to end the chaotic age, yet the world clung stubbornly to the belief that rulership belonged to men alone.

Still in swaddling clothes, she was sent to a remote village, where Wu Jiufeng grew up in utter poverty and hardship. Famine, plunder, and war followed one after another; a massacre wiped out her only relative, and at the age of ten, the orphaned girl stepped alone into the boundless chaos of the age.

On her road of displacement, she met trusted companions and suffered unforgettable betrayal; on the battlefield, she encountered the warlord Xiao Jingyuan, and the two became fierce rivals, love and hatred pulling at them again and again, their bond and ambition locked in struggle.

As a woman, she raised the banner of rebellion and endured mockery from the states, rejection from noble clans, and slander from every side. Repeatedly trapped and repeatedly brought to the brink of death, Wu Jiufeng gathered refugees with her compassionate heart and, with strategy as her weapon, maneuvered across the Central Plains, contended for the ten kingdoms, and pacified the wolf smoke of the four directions.

After a century of struggle, the dust settled and the rivers and mountains were unified once more. Yet court ministers cited ancient rites and did everything they could to block a woman from ascending the throne.

With the vast land and rivers won through half a lifetime of bloodshed as her proof, Wu Jiufeng broke through a thousand years of shackles, offered sacrifice to Heaven, ascended the throne, and established the state name Great Zhou.

From a village orphan covered in dust to the first empress in history to create an age of great prosperity.

A life of upheaval, half a life of slaughter, love and hatred rising and falling.

A phoenix rising from the mud, at last reaching the imperial zenith; under heaven, Great Zhou.