Twenty-Four Swords

In ancient times, humanity relied on the “Way of Sacrifice” to win the protection of gods and demons. To protect his people, the Giant King willingly let himself be bound by the “Chains of Faith” cast by nine human cities. Whenever believers sacrificed a living person, he could break free of his chains and shield humanity, while the sacrificer’s flesh and blood became inscriptions on the Stele of the Stone-Devouring Body-Refinement Art. This continued until Yelu Hong, founding emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty, discovered that sacrificing one’s own kin could alter the inscriptions…

The protagonist, Lu Chen, is a descendant of the Lu clan of Qicheng. As he struggles to make his way, he discovers that the Lu family’s supposedly thousand-year bloodline is nothing more than a lineage of dragon herders raising livestock for the Heavenly Dao…