The last years of the Han, when the empire splits three ways and every oath, ambush and alliance is a wager on which of three men ends up holding the world. From the day of the oath sworn in the peach garden, loyalty and ambition, statecraft and the mandate of Heaven wrestle each other again and again across a broken age; what Luo Guanzhong wrote was never only war, but the human heart — whoever can gather it is the one who can build order out of a divided land.