In the mist hanging over the Grand Canal in the third year of Yongchun, a secret capable of toppling the empire lay hidden.
A bamboo pole wielded by Xie Linyuan, a canal worker, pierced the fog surrounding a twenty-year-old bloody case. A gilded invitation from Nangong Mingyue, the young lady of the Canal Gang, drew him into twelve deadly trials. When the lost martial arts of the Prince of Zhennan's household resurfaced in the martial world, and vermilion edicts from the Directorate of Ceremonial secretly carried the deadly poison of corpse-controlling Gu, a contest that began over the Dragon Vein Armory turned Japanese ninjas, Miaojiang Gu masters, and secret imperial guards of the Embroidered Uniform Guard into pieces on a chessboard.
Clutching a worn iron token of the Big Dipper, he remembered his master's dying words amid the flames of the Sword-Forging Manor: “The emperor guards the city of the living. We must guard the justice of the dead.” Wearing a phoenix hairpin, she crossed a field of deadly mechanisms and took the bloodstained Rabbit Key from the trembling hands of the master of the Thousand Mechanisms Pavilion. Only then did she learn that the Martial Alliance Leader's seal was actually the key to opening hell.
As the twelve secret keys rang out, the underground palace beneath the imperial mausoleums of Nanjing slowly opened. The unrotted corpse on the Dragon Throne gripped the blade they knew best, while the old canal worker who had once pulled A-Qi from the water was hurling a torch into the oil-soaked heart of the Dragon Vein.
