“He was ordered to kill me, but somewhere between our blades, he fell for me.”
Dark currents stir at the Great Zhou court, while forces in the martial world are poised to act. Xiao Jingheng, heir to Prince Ning, angers the emperor with his outspoken remonstrations and is demoted to border inspector. He does not know that the Shadow Pavilion has already marked him for death.
Yun Zhan, the Shadow Pavilion’s top assassin, is cold-blooded and merciless. No one has ever survived his sword. But when he is ordered to assassinate the heir, their clash on a rainy night makes him waver over his mission for the first time. Xiao Jingheng’s eyes are too clear, too pure for a person in this corrupt world.
A crisis on the border forces the enemies to join hands against a common foe. As they spend their days together, Yun Zhan discovers that the heir is nothing like the powerful nobles around him: he personally serves porridge to refugees, teaches assassins to read and write, and even takes a deadly arrow for Yun Zhan without hesitation when an attacker strikes.
“Why did you save me?” Yun Zhan asks hoarsely, the night stained with blood.
“Instinct,” Xiao Jingheng replies with an open smile. “Just as you could have killed me, but lowered your sword.”
When the Shadow Pavilion’s final ultimatum arrives and arrest warrants from the court spread across the land, the former assassin and the heir stand at a crossroads of fate:
Will they turn their swords on each other, or betray the whole world for a chance at redemption on the edge of a blade?
“An acclaimed historical tale of court intrigue and redemption”
◇ Cold-blooded assassin VS radiant young heir, two formidable men who go from clashing to entrusting each other with their lives
◇ Court intrigue × martial-world bloodshed × forbidden affection, woven into a complex plot
◇ An intense emotional transformation from “mission target” to “lifelong obsession”
“If this martial world has no place for us, then we’ll upend it.”
