The Iron Spine of the Warring States

In 359 BC, Qin's new laws have just taken effect, and undercurrents swirl through Xianyang. Ying Tie, the son of a blacksmith, makes a name for himself at the government foundry with his family's secret iron-forging technique. But when he crafts an iron sword far superior to the standard issue, he is drawn into a deadly struggle between the old nobility and the reformers. When the ring-pommeled dao he forged with the crucible steel method cuts through the smoke of battle on the Hexi front, and the improved curved-shaft plow sends waves of wheat rolling across the Guanzhong Plain, the youth once mocked for working with “base metal” will stand firm as iron and raise the banners of the Great Qin's advance eastward. From the workshops of Xianyang to Hangu Pass, from the Jixia Academy to the depths of the Chu royal palace in Ying, he wields a hammer in one hand to forge weapons and a sword in the other to navigate the shifting tides of power. Amid mountains of corpses and whirlpools of political intrigue, he witnesses the rise of the Iron Age and forges a Warring States legend of his own.