Guardian General of the Nation

Northern Frontier, at the nation’s border.

Hundreds of helicopters stood in perfect formation.

A man clad in a war-time python-patterned robe stood tall upon a desolate stretch of land.

Above him, the twilight sun bled across the sky like spilled blood.

Before him, rows of gravestones, each marked by a mound of ceremonial attire.

On every tombstone, without exception, was engraved the same surname:

Xiao.

“Father. Mother.”

“And all my kin of the Xiao clan!”

“Your unfilial son, Xiao Ye, has returned!”

Xiao Ye’s face was ashen, his expression bleak. He suddenly knelt before the dozen gravestones, bowing his head nearly a hundred times with resounding force.

For over five years in the army, he had slain countless enemies, reclaimed borderlands, unified vast territories—accomplishing in five years what no war god before him had achieved.

Yet, few knew that his enlistment had been born not of choice, but of desperation.

His clan was destroyed, his family framed and slaughtered—fourteen souls, not one left whole.

He had only the option to run.

To flee, endlessly, day and night.

All for a single hope: to survive, so that one day he might avenge his bloodline.

In the end, he had sought refuge in a border military camp, and by a twist of fate, become a soldier.

In this moment, Xiao Ye’s body trembled.

These dozen gravestones were the obsession that kept him crawling from piles of corpses time and again.

They were his sole reason to go on living.

“Lord Xiao,