Banyue

**Banyue** (半月, *Bànyuè*) was a kingdom located in the Gobi Desert before it was eradicated by the Yong'an nation around 200 years ago.

At present, the site of the kingdom is named the *Banyue Pass*. Amongst the merchants, the place was also known as **Banming** (半命, *Bànmìng*; lit. Half-life) as it is said that if a caravan were to stray too close, half of the caravan will never leave.

## Location

The Banyue kingdom is located in the Gobi Desert right above an oasis. It's shaped like a great fortress enclosed by four walls hundreds of feet high. The fortress itself is colored like the sand as a natural camouflage.

The kingdom is the size of a capital city, the population peaking at about ten thousand people. The reason for its small size was that the oasis in their possession can only support so many lives.

Though the population was small, the army of Banyue was a force to be reckoned with. There were more male than female in the kingdom, and men who were not farmers or physically hindered would join the army, making the average number of soldiers about four thousand men. Most of them were around nine feet tall (2.7m), built like a beast and prefer maces to swords. These soldiers were particularly tenacious, capable of fighting even with a sword sticking out of their torsos and have been noted to be extremely violent in nature.

The language they used was *Banyuanese*, noted to be ghastly, guttural and heavy in tongue rolling.

### Banyue Palace

A large, grandiose structure that has fallen into ruin. It was said that a kind-hearted queen once lived within its walls and her action led to the Banyue Fern becoming the antidote to Scorpion Snake's venom. In front of it was a large garden where unfortunate merchants would be planted as nourishment for the Shanyue ferns.

### Sinner's Pit

A giant enclosure made of four massive walls 20ft (6m) in height, 30ft (9m) in length and 4ft (1.2m) in width. Though it looked like the walls were made of mud or concrete it was in fact made of a stronger stone reinforced with magic. In the middle was a pit noted to be as deep as an abyss with no visible bottom.

The Sinner's Pit was a jail meant for criminals. It was filled with venomous snakes and ravenous beasts and criminals would be thrown in from the top. In the middle of the pit was a pole where criminals that deserved to be humiliated would be stripped naked and hung, when the criminal died from starvation and his body begin to rot it will naturally fall into the pit.

Two hundred years after Banyue kingdom massacre, the Guoshi of Banyue would often be seen hanging from a pole on top of the structure.

### General Hua's Tomb

Located in the middle of the desert a few hours outside Banyue kingdom. It's located inside a man-made cave carved into a large, black, half-round boulder the size of a small shrine. The opening was as wide as two doors but half the height of a person, leading into a dark, hollow space that housed a stone slate.

The stone slate was an epithet for General Hua, a soldier of the Yong'an borders, written in Banyuanese. He was, in fact, not a general but a captain and the slate told the story about how he was at the beginning the captain of hundreds, then fifty, then twenty, before ultimately dying in the battlefield because he tripped on his loose shoelaces and got trampled by the two armies. The reason for his continuous demotion was because he kept stopping the Banyuanese army from killing Yong'an citizen but would also stop his people from killing Banyue people.

Even with his terrible reputation in the army, the captain was respected by the people of the borders that even the citizen of his enemy state would make a memorial for him.

## Culture

The people of Banyue are a deeply honorable group. They hate liars, traitors and disprove of underhanded means. They are blessed with powerful physique, born naturally tall and powerful. They are also very appreciative of liveliness. On the other hand, they would discriminate against people without said traits.

Tribalism is very strong in Banyue as everyone who doesn't come from within their walls are regarded as either people from Yong'an, relatives of Yong'an or descendants of Yong'an, and are all equally despised as enemy. The people of Yong'an who lived in the border of Banyue kingdom are given the cold shoulders and despised, and so does the Banyue people who married them and the children born from their union.

The people of Banyue take death and funeral very seriously as it's believed the shape of the deceased would be how they are reborn (ex: a corpse missing an arm would see its soul reborn handicapped).

## History

The Banyue Kingdom was built in the Gobi desert around an oasis and located facing the Yong'an Kingdom. The two Kingdoms failed to agree on the ground of territory division and thus many conflicts were born in the border, causing the two races to despise each other. The Banyue Kingdom felt that the Yong'an Kingdom was invading their territory, but Pei Xiu stated that Yong'an Kingdom was upset due to the Banyue Kingdom taking the oasis all for themselves and wouldn't allow Yong'an Kingdom to have a say in the territory division

A few years after the battle that killed General Hua, Ban Yue became the head priestess of the kingdom. People feared her due to Ban Yue having been treated terribly during her childhood for her mixed Banyue and Yong'an blood, they fear that Ban Yue would take revenge once she comes into power. But the general Kemo supported her after she saved his people from a sandstorm and dug graves for those she couldn't save with her own hands.

After the years of bloodshed, an elite troop of 2000 soldiers led by Pei Xiu attacked the Banyue Kingdom. The night before the invasion, the people of Banyue held a secret meeting where they agree that the survivors of the invasion would strap explosives to their bodies and mix into the Midland's crowded area to bring as many Yong'an people as they could. This plan includes even the elderly, women and children.

Ban Yue leaked this secret to Pei Xiu who then decided the only way to avoid such a disaster was to kill all Banyue people with no exception.

In the day of the invasion, Ban Yue opened the fortress gate and allowed the Yong'an troop to massacre the Banyue people. After hearing about this betrayal, Kemo took a few men to hunt her and hung her in the Sinner's Pit before they, too, lost their lives in the battle.

Ever since then, the warriors and head priestess of Banyue became Wrath-level ghosts haunting the ruined kingdom. Each time Ban Yue escaped from her torture on top of the Sinner's Pit, she would hunt and throw in as many warriors as she could into the pit and set up a barrier that would block anyone from leaving the pit. Meanwhile, the Banyue soldiers would capture her and hung her back up.

Years after the fall of Banyue Kingdom, the Banyue Mountain Pass became known as Banming due to half of any passing group wouldn't survive the journey. The real reason behind the deaths were Pei Xiu who has been luring people into the Ban Yue Kingdom for two centuries by infecting people with Scorpion Snake's and telling them about Shanyue fern. He played a major part in killing the people of the fortress city and wanted to keep the ghosts satisfied, so they wouldn't cause trouble and expose the slaughter he had done as a mortal.

The current status of the kingdom is unknown, but there are no records of anyone residing there as all ghosts inside the Sinner's Pit were killed by Hua Cheng.

## Mythology

Amongst the masses nowadays, the popular version of Banyue Kingdom's history was told as follow:

Banyue was once a kingdom populated with powerful warriors and was served by a powerful State Preceptor. They occupied an oasis and an important checkpoint in the western region of the Central Plains, causing them to come into repeated conflict with the Yong'an Kingdom.

200 years ago, Yong'an finally sent an army that burned Banyue to the ground. However, the State Preceptor's and the warriors' resentment didn't fade. They turned into resentful ghosts that haunted the Banyue Pass and the warriors could sometimes be seen wandering the desert in a hunt for prey.

Thus, the cursed land gave birth to the legend that every time someone were to pass, over fifty percent would go missing.

## Trivia

* The people of Banyue feared the Scopion Snakes so much that the fear stays even after they died.
* The Gobi Desert is mentioned to be part of Pei Ming's and Quan Yizhen's territory as it is located in the northwest.
* The Gobi Desert, where the Banyue kingdom is located, is also a real desert in Northern China and Southern Mongolia.
* The pit of snakes, scorpions and rocky caves as shelter from sandstorms are all places Mo Xiang Tong Xiu saw when she traveled to an ancient city in Great Northwest. She sprained a foot when taking pictures.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Novel, Book 1, Chapter 26: Dallying HuaLian; Night-Fall in Sinner's Pit III
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Novel, Book 1, Chapter 22: Shortened Distance; Adrift in Sandstorms III
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Novel, Book 1, Chapter 24: Dallying Hualian; Night-Fall in Sinner's Pit
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Novel, Book 1, Chapter 21: Shortened Distance; Adrift in Sandstorms II
5. ↑ Novel, Book 1, Chapter 17: Within Puqi Monastery, Strange tales of Ban Yue Pass
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Novel, Book 1, Chapter 29: Wind Master in White; Bellowing Sandstorms from Nothing
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Novel, Book 1, Chapter 19 :Within Puqi Monastery, Strange tales of Ban Yue Pass
8. ↑ Novel Postscript