Floating Lanterns on the Azure Sea

[Decisive and ruthless] + [Twist after twist after twist] + [Multiple female leads? Hahaha] + [Slow burn]

A bloodstained scrap of silk. Half a bronze bell, rusted brown.

Twelve years ago, General Lou Xiaoyun, Defender of the Sea, died suddenly at Yazhou Harbor. His body was found hanging upside down from the mast of a sunken ship, and the hundred-thousand-strong navy was reduced to a sea of blood and foam overnight. As an old servant tucked a baby into a hidden compartment in a fishing boat, he used a red-hot boat nail to carve the character “Li” into the child’s back. From then on, there were no surviving orphans of the Lou family, only Li Xiaoshi, scraping by with a lame beggar.

But the scrap of silk torn from the general’s palm also bore the character “Li.”

The broken hilts of Japanese pirates’ swords were engraved with “Li.” The pages of salt merchants’ ledgers were stamped with “Li.” Even the base of the jade wine pot bearing the imperial gift of poisoned wine from Zichen Hall was fired with the bloody “Li” mark of the imperial kiln. When Li Xiaoshi pried open the ninth sunken cargo chest labeled “Li & Co.,” he found that buried beneath the rotting silk was a bronze tiger tally that should have sunk to the bottom of the sea with his father twenty years ago.

As the floating lanterns at sea went out one by one, the tattoo on the lantern bearer’s nape began to bleed:

It was the character “Lou,” slashed through by a blade.