Amid the market's din, Jiang Linchuan sat high in a tavern, dressed in black and wearing golden bells, when grease from a lamb shank splattered onto a nobleman's brocade robe. As the crowd sneered at the eighteen-year-old upstart, they watched him shatter the heart guard of the "Iron Wall Grandmaster" three days later at the Martial Arts Ceremony. Using the forbidden Blood-Burning Art to seize the championship, he planted his foot on the golden plaque proclaiming him "Number One Under Heaven" and drank to his victory.
His adoptive father, Jiang Zhenshan, kicked down the door and flung a bloodstained dossier before him. "For a hundred years, nine champions have met gruesome deaths in the ring! This is a sacrificial post!" He tore apart the lies about Jiang's adoption. "Your real father was torn limb from limb on this very execution platform!" Jiang Linchuan coughed up blood and grinned viciously. "I can slaughter everyone under heaven!"
An ill omen arrived with the blood crows. Night after night, seventy-two death warrants were nailed to the door, depicting the previous champions' bones crushed to pieces. When the medicinal soup Jiang Zhenshan had bought by pawning his ancestral saber was knocked to the ground, Lin Wanzhao, Jiang Linchuan's childhood sweetheart, brought him ginseng broth. The sacrificial artifact gleamed ominously at her cuff.
In the blood-soaked arena, sword light shattered. After killing thirty-seven men, Jiang Linchuan suffered the backlash of the Blood-Burning Art. As he clawed at his chest with bloodshot eyes, trying to tear out his own heart, a hunchbacked old man pressed a withered hand marked with the character "sacrifice" against him and shattered his dantian. The sound of his bones breaking was like ice porcelain crashing to the ground.
The setting sun washed over the shattered monument that had proclaimed him "Number One Under Heaven." A disheveled boy curled in a pool of blood as a child prodded his mangled leg with a wooden stick. "Mom says this is the sacrifice?" In a muddy puddle, the reflection of an eighteen-year-old face looked as withered as an old man's.
Jiang Zhenshan tossed him a bundle of coarse cloth. Half a cold sweet potato lay atop a yellowed betrothal letter: an invitation to the wedding of Lin Wanzhao and the High Priest's son. Fiery clouds swallowed the sky full of funeral paper, and the ashes drifting down had once been the land deeds to the Jiang family estate.
