Days of Glory
When the morning bell rang over Twin City, caravans were already crossing Skydust Pass. Camel bells chimed; silk and spice mingled with desert dust, drifting westward on the wind. It was the 70th year of the Protectorate’s rule—the golden age of the Western Regions.
In Jade City, merchants from every land thronged the streets. Usun traders bartered ruby-inlaid daggers for Yuezhi’s luminous cups; Kucha musicians strummed pipa beneath tavern eaves, singing tunes adapted from Chang’an. From the city walls, General Liu Yi gazed at the oasis and pasture alike. Bronze wind-bells swayed above him, echoing the distant chimes of the Central Plains.
Liu Yi traced the dragon motif on his sword, eyes scanning the beacon towers stretching into the horizon—ten li apart, each stacked with wolf dung and dry wood. Thirty years ago, this land was a battlefield: eight tribes had bled for decades over nephrite mines, then fought anew for control of the trade routes.
But the Protectorate brought order. Though tensions lingered, open war ceased.
“Double the watch at all beacons,” Liu Yi ordered, armor clinking as he turned. “Usun stirs again.” His deputies nodded, but missed the unease in the general’s eyes.
Three days prior, an imperial dispatch had arrived: “Drought in Guanzhong. Grain shipments halted.” Though the Protectorate's granaries could still sustain them, dangers, like quicksand beneath the desert, waited to swallow all in an unguarded moment.
The Storm Begins
Disaster struck faster than a sandstorm.
On a snowy winter dawn, as Liu Yi inspected cavalry drills, a lathered horse burst through the camp gates. The courier collapsed, clutching a yellow scroll: “The Emperor is dead! The new Emperor commands to disband all frontier garrisons!”
Jade City darkened in an instant. Liu Yi gripped the imperial decree until his knuckles whitened. No troops. No supplies. His officers bowed in silence, afraid to meet his gaze.
News spread like wildfire. Tribes stirred like wolves smelling blood. Kucha seized envoys, demanding revised oasis borders; Yuezhi patrols prowled the border; Usun sent assassins to steal the garrison’s farmland maps.
“They’ve waited for this day,” Liu Yi muttered before the war table. “All those ‘alliances’ were signed with daggers behind backs.”
As the first troops marched east, townsfolk knelt along the road, burning incense. An old woman wailed, clutching her infant: “Don’t go! Who will protect us?” Liu Yi reined in his horse, watching banners vanish into the dust, and remembered the blood-soaked dusk twenty years past, when half his brothers fell on this foreign land.
The real storm, he knew, had only just begun.
The Deserted Garrison
“When the last caravan left Skydust Pass, Liu Yi gathered thirty men in a ruined beacon tower. They were stragglers who refused to retreat: border guards, wandering escorts, even orphaned youths raised by Han merchants.
“We are forsaken,” Liu Yi said. “But what of the people?”
By firelight, they debated names—“Westward Guard,” “Loyal Vanguard”—until Liu Yi raised a hand. “Call us the Deserted Garrison.”
This makeshift force soon proved formidable. They recruited three hundred refugees and took Duststorm Town as their base. Liu Yi trained them in desert tactics—swift, silent, lethal. For a time, they kept the roads safe, repelled bandits, and shielded the town.
Then came the night of the Blood Moon.
Galehowl, chief of the Wolf Gang and former Usun general, ambushed the Deserted Garrison in Wolf Vale with three hundred riders. “Kill Liu Yi!” Arrows rained like locusts. Liu Yi’s guard fought desperately to extract him, but two hundred brothers fell. The Garrison never recovered. Former allies turned traitors.
In their final stand by the oasis river, Liu Yi and seventeen survivors barricaded themselves in an abandoned post. As Wolf Gang sabers splintered the door, the once-mighty general straightened his coat and smiled: “At least… we held the last beacon.”
Years later, shepherd boys still point to crumbling ruins in the deep desert: “There—the Deserted Garrison made their last stand.” And in the wind through broken windows, some swear they hear the clash of steel.
Shadows Over the Dunes
After the Garrison’s fall, chaos ruled the Western Regions. Tribes clashed; raider gangs multiplied like desert weeds.
Yet from the darkness rose figures in straw hats and plain robes, appearing in markets, hidden in caravans, or vanishing alone into the sands. Wherever raiders struck, a shadow would strike back, swift, silent, deadly.
Some claimed the Dune Wanderer was a lone swordsman, blade flashing like a falling star on moonless nights. Others swore it was a brotherhood that robbed the rich to aid the poor. Rumors even spoke of surviving Garrison soldiers, training in secret camps deep in the dunes.
Indeed, the balance of power was shifting. Yuezhi caravans were hit, but no culprit was found. Galehowl lost his helmet to an arrow fired from sixty meters away. Even Usun palace guards whispered of mysterious footprints on garden rocks.
Liu Yi still lived.
Rescued the night the Garrison fell, Liu Yi hid near Spring Post. Years of battle left him scarred, but also wise. Studying meridians while healing, he learned a new art: Meridian Awakening. Through breath and intent, it granted strength, speed, and explosive power. It’s easy to learn yet hard to master. Without insight, one might train a lifetime and touch only its surface.
Now, three years on, tales of the Dune Wanderer echo across the dunes. And soon, their unseen founder, Liu Yi, will emerge from seclusion. The sands are stirring once more.
