Sage's Bone

It is said that beneath Emperor's Cliff on the Great Wilderness Mountain, a scroll of heavenly secrets suddenly appeared. Before Green Ridge Peak, where miasma shrouded the sky, a toad Taoist was playing chess with a fair-faced scholar. The Taoist pinched a black stone between his fingers and suddenly sighed. "Look at the thirty-six commanderies of Jiangdong. The White Tiger Star has descended to the mortal realm, stirring thirty-six currents of primordial energy and seventy-two paths of karma. This will surely make for a fine spectacle."

The scholar placed a white stone and smiled at the board. "It's all but a fleeting illusion. Sooner or later, the golden lacquer on the stone lions before the Ye family's gate will be shattered by the roar of dragons and the song of swords."

As the two spoke, the scroll of heavenly secrets began to move without a breeze, its ink flowing like dragons and snakes:

The White Tiger's first roar startles the old stars; the eagle's wings break and it falls into the mortal cage.

A gale rises over Qingzhou; the broken sword still bears a rainbow of six colors.

Demon spirits lurk in the Golden Throne Hall; river dragons hide by the Jade Belt River.

When the windmill turns the wheel of fate, only then will all karma be seen as empty.

After reading it, the Taoist clapped his hands and laughed. "What a line: 'all karma is empty.' The windmill at Li the Madman's waist has turned for three whole years, and the five hundred arhats buried in the Ye family's back garden, don't they fit this verse perfectly?" The scholar shook his brocade robe, scattering a sky full of stars. "Fool! Can't you see the young tiger in the woods, its claws and fangs still untested, yet eager to venture into the ten thousand feet of worldly pleasures? Better to..." Before he could finish, purple lightning suddenly appeared in the sky. Amid the thunderclap, the scroll of heavenly secrets turned into green smoke and vanished.

I wandered to the Great Wilderness Mountain and happened upon a fragment of this scroll.

Now I have spun its threads of karma into this tale, The Sage's Bones. Readers should know that in this book:

Under the imperial city's roots, undercurrents surge. Is the Grandmaster realm really the summit?

Love and hate become shadows of blades and swords; primordial energy turns life and death upside down.

The old madman laughs as he lifts the sky screen; the broken sword's cold light shines through the nine heavens.

Don't dismiss love and passion as trivial; they are steeped in the blood and tears of the mortal world.

Dear readers, come see how Lin Yu tramples the highest heavens, and what kind of shocking, ill-fated romance he stirs up.