Nan'an
Nan'an is a county-level city in the Fujian province of China, which used to be an important cultural and economic place for this region. As with other cities which simultaneously serve as counties in China, Nan'an is composed of a large array of towns, villages, and farmlands aside from its urban center. It is itself a constituent of the Quanzhou prefecture-level city.
Once a thriving cultural and economic center for the region, during the reign of the Jiajing Emperor of the Ming dynasty, it hosted the stronghold of the Templar Wei Bin, one of the group of eunuchs called the Eight Tigers. It was there that in 1529, Wei fell to the blade of the Assassin Shao Jun.
History
During the sixteenth century, Wei Bin, a member of the Chinese Rite of Templars, resided in a heavily fortified stronghold in Nan'an. Known to the Assassins as the "Snake", he numbered among the Eight Tigers, a faction of Templar eunuchs, and distinguished himself as their spy and chief investigator, a master at rooting out Assassins in hiding. After the Eight Tigers nearly eradicated the the Chinese Brotherhood of Assassins in 1524 with the Great Rites Controversy, they became the target of one of the Assassin survivors, Shao Jun.[1]
In January 1529, Jun and Wang Yangming, Mentor of the Chinese Brotherhood, arrived in Nan'an intending to assassinate Wei Bin and learn the whereabouts of the Eight Tigers' leader Zhang Yong. Yangming left to meet with an informant, leaving the mission up to Jun. While Jun navigated through the city, taking care to remain incognito by blending with the bustling crowds, she stopped at several altars to light candles for Assassins who had fallen because of Wei Bin. She hoped that by doing so, she would cultivate some peace and positivity to counter her obsession with vengeance.[1]
After swimming across the Jin River, Shao Jun arrived before Bin's stronghold, which she infiltrated by scaling its walls onto a terrace. Despite the palace's security, Jun moved through it without ever being seen, dispatching Bin's three personal handcannon bodyguards before assassinating on the balcony of the tallest building.[1]
As he was dying, Wei Bin revealed that Zhang Yong was right there in Nan'an and that he had went after Wang Yangming while Shao Jun was preoccupied with her own hunt. It did not take long for guards to discover Bin's corpse, and Jun narrowly escaped the premises while the alarm sounded throughout the castle. Bin's soldiers secured the Jin River bridge that connected the castle to the city, but Jun was able to divert some of their forces by destroying a tower with explosives. After managing to sneak across the bridge, she rushed to find her master.[1]
In the meantime, Wang Yangming was engaged in a vicious duel with Zhang Yong at a building's courtyard. Jun arrived too late, just in time to see Yong plunging his sword through Yangming's chest and retrieving the Precursor box that the legendary Italian Assassin Ezio Auditore da Firenze had given to Jun. Sighting Jun, Yong ordered his guards to ambush her. Though soldiers flooded the building, the Assassin was able to evade them and retreat back into hiding, from where she then summarily assassinated each of them one at a time from the shadows. Once she had cleared the courtyard of enemies, Jun approached her master's body and lamented that she failed to rescue him and the box.[1]
A century later after the death of Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong in 1662, he was entombed in Nan'an as a national hero for his resistance against the Qing conquest of China.[1]