Come one, come all! Gather around and treat yourself to the extraordinary epic about a local legend. That’s right, this is the tale of the one and only: Jun Ze the Fearless Bladesman.

Now, as you all should know, our intrepid hero hailed from our own humble part of the world. In fact, before he made a name for himself, he used to work for his uncle on that farm beside Tin Creek, herding water buffalo. A harmless and industrious enough boy, if a bit on the tetchy side. But anyone with eyes could see that his was a restless soul, one that couldn’t be contained to the muddy backwaters of Snake Valley.

Sure enough, at the tender age of fourteen, and against the advice of everyone in the village, young Jun Ze slung a bag over one shoulder and a dao over the other, and set off by his lonesome, to the edge of the Valley and beyond.

I still remember the bantering among us villagers. None of us had ever travelled farther than Carpscale Ridge, you see, and we all placed bets on how far Jun would make it. He paid a pretty candareen for that dao too, and as far as anyone could tell, he’d never before held a weapon in his hand. We were all convinced he was only asking for trouble, and the best we could hope for was that he’d trudge on home one day, having seen the folly of his ways.

Well, we all know how that turned out, don’t we? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

Back to Jun. You know what they say: you can take the boy out of Snake Valley, but you can’t take Snake Valley out of the boy. By all accounts, trouble did find and follow him everywhere he went.

Bad manners, a short temper, and not to mention his Valley boy twang. He just seemed to rub the fancier city folk the wrong way, and I hear he accumulated his fair share of nasty scrapes and deep bruises. In those early days, that dao on his shoulder likely did him more harm than good. It’s a small miracle he even saw the wrong side of twenty, but… I suppose some people just have a knack for it, you know? Survival, I mean.

Now, there’s some debate about where exactly his legend began. Like I said, he really was something of a nomad: a wayfarer if you want to be poetic, a vagabond if you want to be unkind. Some say it all started in Orchid City, where he managed to oust a corrupt official that was overtaxing the peasant folk. Others will swear up and down that it was in Mount Cataract, where he duelled a qilin spirit and somehow lived to tell the tale.

Suffice to say, before any of us knew it, that dao on his shoulder carried as much weight as Jun’s growing reputation. The people even gave it a name: Viperfang. Still brings a smile to my face, knowing our local boy carried a bit of Snake Valley with him on the road. And if even your sword has a name, you can bet you’ve also earned a formidable epithet of your own.

Jun Ze the Fearless Bladesman. Simple and effective. Those were the words on the lips of all who saw him strolling down their streets, still dressed in the plain tunic and trousers that betrayed his humble origins.

It’s said that merely the whispers of Jun’s name were enough to send hardened criminals running for the hills. Because he truly was fearless, almost unnaturally so—a sentiment echoed by all those who watched him fight. No opponent was too strong for him, no odds too steep. Folks needed but to point at the source of their problems, and Jun would go running to remove it, no questions asked.

Mind you, he was like that from the word go, even before he actually had the skills and reputation to match. I guess those early scrapes and bruises paid off, because what came out on the other end was one hell of a swordsman: peerless throughout the Four Seas. And as his journey stretched, so too did his legend grow.

But! And you knew this ‘but’ was coming, didn’t you? As fearless as Jun Ze doubtless was, he also had a few very strange quirks that made folks wonder if he mightn’t be vincible after all.

For one, he religiously avoided anything to do with plums and silvergrass. That meant never going near a plum tree or a silvergrass field. Wouldn’t even drink from a cup if it had paintings of plum petals.

Then there was that thing of wanting to get everything done while the sun was out. Really hated staying out past sundown, even if there were scoundrels to be put in their place and damsels to be rescued. And if the moon happened to be waxing crescent? Forget about it! You’d be hard-pressed to find him, let alone send him out on a quest.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Speaking of damsels… and this might’ve been the strangest quirk of them all. Now, you can imagine a hot-blooded young man of Jun’s stature would’ve been up to his neck in romantic prospects everywhere he went. And certainly, you’ll find many a poem, song, even a novel or two about the array of women that broke his heart—and in turn had their hearts broken by him.

But one peculiar commonality in all the tales of Jun’s misadventures in love… was that he and his lovers never embraced. Not one hug. Not even so much as a handshake. Don’t laugh, it’s all true, you know! I have it on good authority that Jun Ze the Fearless Bladesman never held a woman in his arms for as long as he lived, and you can take that to the family coffers, thanks very much.

Be that as it might, we now come to the part of the story that you’ve all been waiting for. Our hero’s travels took him to many an exotic and thrilling locale, but perhaps none more so than the bustling port city of Temasek.

Now, if you’re not familiar with the hive of villainy and seduction that is Temasek, let me paint a picture. A seaside settlement of temperate climate, blessed with perpetual spring. Legend has it that the first king of Temasek arrived there on boat from the Southern Shadowlands, bringing with him a brand of magic that made his people especially warlike.

Much of the city’s early history is soaked in blood, both domestic and foreign. Raids, counter-raids, uprisings, and civil wars. You name it, they’ve fought and killed over it. Things are relatively calmer now, but what’s left is a city in endless flux, a constant power struggle between shady criminals and dodgy politicians.

Of course, that’s exactly the kind of chaos our hero Jun Ze thrived on. You see, he’d caught wind of a new faction that had wrested control of Temasek and were now terrorizing everyone from the aristocrats to the city officials to humble folk like us who were just trying to make an honest living. A band of brigands, about 300 strong all told, went by the name Crimson Tigers. You know how it is: the lowlier the criminals, the loftier the names they give themselves.

Anyway, these Crimson Tigers got up to all kinds of nasty business, not the least of which was slave trading. Yes, I know. I can see the shock on your faces, and I feel the same way. You’d think that in this day and age, we’d long be rid of such vile practices, but evil festers where good has failed, and that’s why we need heroes like Jun Ze to show the evildoers of the world what’s what.

Now, up to this point, Jun Ze had confronted and quashed all manner of corruption and criminal activities with his gung-ho approach, but nothing got him quite as riled up as slavers and their accomplices. You might think that’s only too natural, but I reckon there was something deeper, something personal. Maybe even something that happened to him right here in Snake Valley, before he went and became the Fearless Bladesman. That’s for me to speculate and for you to ponder.

Suffice to say, if Jun Ze caught even the whiff of slaver stench, he’d drop everything and run headfirst into the thick of the action, and he wouldn’t rest until every last slaver fell to his dao. The Crimson Tigers were no exception. As soon as he heard about their nefarious ways—abducting local men, women, and even children, then shipping them off on unmarked boats—he hired the first ferryman he saw off the coast of Amber Peninsula, and off he went.

And even in the lawless pit of Temasek, the name Jun Ze carried weight. The locals—the honest folk—flocked to him, convinced that he was their salvation, their one and only hope.

The men bought him drinks and toasted him with superlatives. The women feasted him with the choicest ingredients they could scrounge together. And the children gathered with loud demands for stories and furtive ganders at Viperfang.

It was the children who made the biggest impression on Jun. For their eyes at once gleamed with a fragile hope and were clouded by sorrow beyond their years.

One girl in particular—an orphan, no less—all but bowled him over with the force of her personality and the earnestness of her pleas. Lili was her name, and she and her little brother Dawei lived from scrap to scrap on the mean streets of Temasek. That was, until Dawei became one of the latest victims of the Crimson Tigers, kidnapped and taken to the brigands’ stronghold atop Moonwatch Hill, where he and the other abductees awaited their dreadful fate.

Not to worry, Jun assured the girl, who was no older than he himself had been when he left Snake Valley. I’ll get your brother back in one piece, you’ll see. In fact, why don’t I get to it right now while the sun is out? Just point me to the slavers, and I’ll get rid of them, every last one.

Are you sure? The men and women closed in, suddenly fearful that they were about to send a good man to his death. There are 300 of them, and only one of you.

Not to worry, Jun repeated himself. The slavers don’t scare me, and this fight is already as good as won. I’m not called the Fearless Bladesman for nothing.

So it was that, with a final toast (death to the Crimson Tigers!), the downtrodden people of Temasek saw off our hero to his latest adventure. And as Jun Ze marched toward Moonwatch Hill, the last pair of eyes he met belonged to Lili: gleaming with fragile hope, and clouded by sorrow beyond her years.