The Gold-Splitting Order

In the Battle of Canglong Gorge, twenty-seven members of the Zhenyuan Escort Agency were transporting 300,000 taels of gold in military pay. Twenty-six were buried beneath the snow. Only Lin Yi, the deputy chief escort, survived by leaping off a cliff. When he awoke, he was the top fugitive on the wanted posters, accused of "colluding with bandits and robbing military pay."

The court issued the Martial Arts Ban in response, and overnight, martial artists across the land entered a dark winter. Three years later, as the Northern Hu cavalry threaten the passes, the frontier troops guarding them have gone three months without pay.

The escort who escaped death, the female chief constable who trusts only evidence, the ghost who crawled out of a heap of corpses, the smiling young master of the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion who hides a knife behind his grin... Everyone is searching for the same gold, and every one of them is merely a pawn in someone else's game.

You can ban swords, but you cannot ban the human heart. As Lin Yi peels back the layers of this game, he must face one final question: how can he demand justice for twenty-six lives from an emperor who "did everything right"?