At the founding of the Jin dynasty, Wanyan Aguda established the “Han Quarter,” scattering Jurchen orphans into the Song like seeds.
The hero, Aleteng, was supposed to steal secret manuals and lie low. Instead, under the assumed name Gao Lei, he fled the organization and, through talent and good fortune, mastered peerless martial arts. He even led the Beggars’ Gang in founding the “Clean Clothes Sect,” amassing great wealth throughout the martial world.
But when he falls in love with a Song princess, and his peerless power draws him into the tide of history as Jin destroys Liao, he realizes he has long been caught up in a much greater scheme. Every upheaval in the martial world, from Shaolin’s disappearance into seclusion and the rise of the Five Greats to the vanishing of the Spirit Vulture Palace and the emergence of the Dugu legend, turns out to be bound by blood to those turbulent years.
From pawn to player, from the martial world to the battlefield, Aleteng is torn between love and country, loyalty and blood vengeance. When history’s wheels crush Bianjing’s splendor during the Jingkang Incident and the woman he loves dies, he returns to the Jin dynasty, carrying a lifetime of martial arts and a century of grudges, and begins his path of revenge. Meanwhile, the Yue Family Army, established in the Southern Song in Jiangnan, advances like a storm toward Huanglong, only to be recalled by Zhao Gou’s twelve gold dispatches.
This is the legend of a hidden piece breaking free of its strings and uncovering a century of secret history in the martial world. Every planted clue converges here in the torrent of events.
The plot is not protracted, each chapter is concise, and the stories are interlocking. It is a traditional novel with no rebirth, no system, and no time travel.