Qinchuan is set at the moment an empire dies. Across the three Hexi maps, the player is not just traveling closer to Chang'an in distance but also closer to the Tang Dynasty's final breath. The Jade Gate Pass is set shortly after the An Lushan Rebellion, when the empire's spirit was shattered but its memory remained fresh. Liangzhou takes place decades later, when hope of restoration has faded and people are making compromises with a declining reality. Qinchuan arrives at the breaking point.
The history that makes this region legible centers on the warlord Zhu Wen. Over a century after the An Lushan Rebellion, Zhu Wen stormed the royal palace, murdered the emperor, and forced a thirteen-year-old boy named Li Zuo onto the throne as a puppet. Then he invited all the Tang princes to a banquet beside a calm, beautiful pool and slaughtered them one by one, tossing their heads into the water. He wiped out the top court officials as well, ensuring the imperial system was thoroughly destroyed. This was the man who opened the Five Dynasties period. He did not merely rebel; he tried to erase an entire bloodline.
Li Zuo watched the warlord kill his father, then was forced to wear the crown by the same murderer. For three years he was a hostage pretending to rule. When Zhu Wen decided he wanted the throne himself, he expelled Li Zuo and soon had him poisoned. History remembers the boy as Emperor Ai, because Ai means sadness.
The game asks: how did this traumatized child become the figure behind the Aureate Pavilion? The answer lies in one person. Liu Qingyi was the only human being Li Zuo truly connected with during his years of fear and humiliation. When Zhu Wen expelled him from the palace through a narrow back alley, Li Zuo tried to send her away. She deserved a future, and he had nothing to offer. But she followed his carriage for miles on foot, her shoes sinking in mud. When he tried again to send her away, she whispered that she wanted to show him the Aureate Dance one last time. In that back alley, the mud on her torn shoes could not diminish the elegance. For one brief moment, the glory of the Tang returned.
Soon after, Zhu Wen ordered Liu Qingyi poisoned, but she was discovered to be immune. A Silver Needle doctor took her to the Gleaming Abyss, where she was subjected to years of unimaginable experiments involving worms of immortality. She became an immortal vessel, but the process stripped away her emotions and humanity. When Li Zuo found her alive years later, he had Master Moonstream restore her mind and memories. For a time they were happy. But Liu Qingyi remembered every victim she had helped lure into the abyss. Out of guilt, she ended her own life.
Li Zuo looked at the sum of his existence: father murdered, empire erased, the woman he loved tortured and consumed by guilt. He concluded that the ability to feel was not a gift but the source of all catastrophe. And so he founded the Aureate Pavilion, named after the dance of his lover, dedicated to turning everyone into emotionless immortal beings. Only then, in his broken logic, could suffering finally stop.
*Based on analysis by [WWM Girl (Goose Girl Stories)](https://www.youtube.com/@GooseGirlStories).*
