In the second, third, tenth, fifteenth, and twenty-seventh years of the reign of King Mundeok of the Sindeok dynasty, great plagues of measles or smallpox broke out throughout Nanwian. In the seventh to the twentieth year of his reign, the Datar leader Canghali invaded northern Nanwian, wreaking havoc and destruction in his wake until he was killed by his sons. In the twenty-eighth year of Mundeok’s reign, a fiery cloud appeared in the sky above the capital Anju in the shape of the omuk, the symbol of the Awakened Master. The monasteries prayed day and night, and the king underwent a retreat to cleanse himself of worldly sin, but the cloud hung over Anju for six months, before a swarm of locusts descended from the northeast — some said they rose out of Temur’s Fall itself — and stripped the plains and rice fields of northern Nanwian bare. And right after the people had had their fill of pestilence and famine, the winter of Mundeok’s twenty-eighth year was so harsh and long that when spring came and melted the ice and snow, the rivers of northern Nanwian overflowed and washed away what was left of their livelihoods and homes, leaving only earth and water. 

Countless innocents were lost in these turbulent decades. Out of concern, but also the goodness of their hearts, countless more opened their charity to those in need. The landed gentry — called ‘little nobles’ by the higher classes — freely gave out the contents of their granaries and bought more from the south to feed the masses of peasants. Doctors, healers, monks, and mystics roamed the land, rendering their services with little or no charge to all who needed them. The unlanded gentry — impoverished warriors of noble lineage who were unemployed in times of peace — took up arms against the hordes of bandits and looters that roamed the land and terrorised the peasantry. Officials laboured, sometimes to their deaths, to raise settlements from dirt again and return the lives of the people to what they had once been. Yet, the people most conspicuously absent from the defence of the commoners against pestilence, terror, and death were the great nobles of the provinces, and most especially those close to the King’s court in Anju. The King himself, for all his acts of religious devotion, was never seen outside of Anju. 

Mundeok was no tyrant, and neither was he a sinful profligate, but his greatest crime was of negligence. Woman-like, he concerned himself with fine art, pottery, music, and poetry, believing himself to be cultured and well-learned, but paid little heed to the affairs of state and the great despair spreading through Nanwian. In his absence, the royal court became divided against itself. While the country nobles fought bandits and disease, the court nobles fought the scholarly gentry and royal abbots, and in the end it was the King’s eunuchs who emerged victorious from the struggle. 

Under the yoke of the royal eunuchs, decadence became the law of the land in Anju. The royal treasury was drained of funds after Canghali’s invasion, and the government’s corruption and excess meant heavier taxes on an already beleaguered population. Mundeok’s interest in gardening and construction of new royal gardens forced officials to extract greater tribute from their jurisdictions to fund these projects, and when this was not enough, they resorted to corrupt practices to fulfill their obligations, and when this was not enough, soldiers were dispatched to strip the populace of all conceivable wealth. When this was not enough, the common people uprooted themselves and fled into the wilds to escape the grasp of the governmental oppression. 

It was in such tumultuous times that our main characters, Bae Joohyun and Son Seungwan, grew up. 

The former was the heir to the stewardship of the village Yodeok, which was located close to the East Sea and had been touched by smallpox once. Joohyun survived it in her childhood, but the disease left a few disfiguring marks on her skin. After inheriting the village upon her father’s death, she was faced with pressure from the local Prefect to extract ridiculous tax amounts from her tenants. When threatened in person by the Prefect, Joohyun was rescued by her tenants, who loved her for her kindness of heart and the righteous character of her protestations, and the Prefect was beaten and sent back to the Governor of Gongju with a letter detailing his crimes of corruption. For Joohyun’s courage and valiant act in resisting the Prefect, Yodeok was granted tax immunity for her lifetime, and she was appointed the Governor’s personal deputy in the area around Yodeok. 

The latter was the last descendant of the ancient royal family of Ansu, which had been conquered by the Great Khan Taibuga two centuries ago. Seungwan was born into a well-off military family that had served the Sindeok kings for generations, and was raised by her uncle. Initially, Seungwan was to be educated like a female, but upon the death of her uncle’s son, he decided that Seungwan would be the one to carry the family legacy, and therefore taught her swordsmanship and the scholarly arts. However, Seungwan lost interest in them after learning the basics, and she said, “Books are only useful for learning to read and write. A sword can only let me kill two or three people at once. I want to learn how to defeat thousands of enemies.” Thus, her uncle educated her in the art of war and military strategy, but again Seungwan did not seem interested in mastering what she was taught. Her uncle was disappointed in Seungwan who showed little motivation or talent apart from great strength, and gave up to let her decide her own destiny. 

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