“If the goods survive, we survive. If the goods perish, we perish.” This is the rule carved into the lintel of Changfeng Escort Agency, and the conviction Su Ningshuang has held firm for ten years.
Ten years ago, her father disappeared while escorting a shipment, and the agency was falsely accused. She fell from the heights into the mire, leading a band of old and wounded survivors as they clung to their crumbling courtyard and scraped by in the sands of the capital. Ten years later, an apparently ordinary escort job to Yangzhou stirred the stagnant waters like a stone, sending ripples far and wide: the blades of Blackwind Stronghold, the waters of the Twelve Linked Coves, the secret agents of the Pacification Bureau, and the “Ten-Thousand-Gold Trading Company” lurking in the shadows, pulling all the strings...
The cold-faced chief escort, the silent spearman, the slippery scout, the miserly bookkeeper, the sharp-tongued medical woman, the impulsive apprentice, and the mysterious old chef whose cooking is terrible: this seemingly unreliable crew must protect their cargo amid flashing blades, survive schemes and conspiracies, and seek answers amid old grudges and tangled affections.
From the capital to the northern deserts, from the Grand Canal to Shu, they have escorted gold and silver, documents, and the common people. They have even protected one another. When the truth is finally revealed, Su Ningshuang understands that an escort’s duty was never just to protect money. It was to defend justice in a troubled age, the weight of human hearts, and that little gust of Changfeng that refuses to die out in the storm.
This is a story of redemption and growth, and a stirring epic song of ordinary people in the martial world.
