Chronicles of the Rainbow Garments and Rivers

In the fourteenth year of the Tianbao era, a single imperial examination fraud case shatters the illusion of Chang'an's golden age. Li Wangsheng, senior disciple of Chunyang Palace, is ordered to escort the implicated examination papers. But on a rainy night at the Vermilion Bird Gate, Tang Sect mechanical beasts ambush him. Hidden in the examination chest's lining is a Miaojiang ink gu that has seeped into the lifelines of three hundred candidates. Ye Zhiqing, head of the Seven Elegance Sect, investigates her junior sister's disappearance and discovers that the silver bells worn by the foreign dancers of the Imperial Music Bureau correspond to the twenty-eight constellations. A fragment of a Zhezhi dance costume points to a conspiracy to burn the scriptures in the Hexi Corridor.

When fragments of the Map of Mountains and Rivers surface on the Medicine King's stele in the Valley of a Thousand Blossoms, a secret war of civilizations spanning the Silk Road erupts. Chunyang sword energy and Seven Elegance sword dances resonate to break the deadlock, while the Tiance's Raging Inferno spears pierce the iron ranks of Tibetan war elephants. The Five Poisons' insect flutes conceal the code to a star map of Dunhuang. From Sogdian letters in Chang'an's ghost market to the Kucha astrolabe in the Longmen Desert, Li Wangsheng and Ye Zhiqing, beneath the shadow of An Lushan's cavalry marching south, use the Huangdi Neijing's meridian clock to dispel poisonous mists and decode battle formations with the gongche notation of the Song of the Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Robe. Amid flashing blades and bloodshed, they protect the legacy of Chinese civilization.

In this storm across the jianghu, every crack in a Mo Dao bears the marks of war along the Western Regions' trade routes, and every silver needle's path points to the lifeblood of High Tang culture. When the sacred flames of the Zoroastrians reach Hanyuan Hall in the Daming Palace, former enemies must take up their swords as brushes and write the most stirring wuxia epic before the realm falls.