When the Zhou came to overthrow the Shang Dynasty not only were they defeated outright, but their state and the future they tried to create would be destroyed in it entirety. In this time there is no hundred schools of thought, no Lao Tzu or Confucius, no Chinese dynasties, nor a united China, no imperial bureaucracy, not even the foreign imports of Buddhism and the like remain. China as we know it never exists, instead in it's place is a history more like that of pre-contact Mesoamerica. East Asia is a land of rival kingdoms vying for regional dominance through mass offerings of human sacrifice. All the resembles the China we know in this world is blood and rice.

Thus is the world our protagonist Hùm was born into the periphery of. A Xi'ou tribesman his people are among the last of the independent barbarians in the South. Yet a raid gone wrong forced him neck deep into a world of martial arts, politics, and human sacrifice.