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freshest streaming service. Hello and welcome to the history of China.

Episode 72, as the world burns.

Welcome back. Now that we've all returned safe, sound, and recharged from our trip to the U.S.

It's time to once again enter the fray of the late stages of the age of disunity as we wind our way towards its inexorable endgame.

But it has been a month now, so it does behoove us to spend at least a moment or so to recap.

When last we left China of the mid-sixth century, specifically in the year 557,

we'd undergone pretty much a complete shuffle of cast. In the north, the once fearsome

Wei dynasty of the Shanbe tribes had fractured into rival factions, first with both sides clinging

to the shreds of former imperial legitimacy by appointing

puppet emperors and naming themselves eastern and western way, respectively, before at last throwing

off those transparent covers, overthrowing the nominal emperors of the Tooba turned Yuan,

turned back to Tooba Clan, and formally enthroning their respective warlords as the

emperors of Northern Chi in the East and and Northern Zow in the west in 550 and 557 respectively.

Meanwhile, Southern China had undergone its own series of bloody revolutions and civil wars following the departure of the

Leong Emperor Wu and his stabilizing influence. In the aftermath of Wu's death, the Leong dynasty

had quickly crumbled due to in no small part its own internal divisions,

...