On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month in Shangjing, bitter snow swirled with hidden currents. At a family banquet in a poor alley south of the city, his adoptive father, a palace guard, said, "The whole city is under lockdown." Shen Yan, who had assumed the name Lin Yan, clenched the bronze sun hidden in his sleeve. It was the only clue to his family's annihilation. The short blade at his waist had just tasted a warrior's blood, and unmelted snow still clung to its edge. In these chaotic times, he would have to contend with political intrigue and cultivate the martial way if he hoped to protect those he cared about.
The Great Jing dynasty had lasted three hundred years, but by now the Eight Great Clans had woven it into an impenetrable web.
The Shen Yan of today was the adoptive son of a low-ranking palace guard in the Imperial City Division, and in the eyes of others, an unemployed vagrant...
As the Northern Barbarians' iron hooves advanced toward the frontier, snow wolves attacked villages with beast-controlling poison, and arguments between reformists and conservatives in court came to nothing, Shen Yan knew he could wait no longer. From a lone, humble official in a cold alley to a blade in the imperial court, from the third rank of the martial path to the road toward becoming a grandmaster, he would uncover not only his family's wrongful persecution, but also how the people could survive beneath this decaying dynasty.
But the road was far more perilous than he had imagined: on one side were the Eight Great Clans' overt and covert attacks, and on the other, the surging undercurrents within !!!. He had to protect the ordinary lives of his adoptive father and younger siblings while holding fast to his principles amid the whirlpool of political intrigue.
This is a tale of revenge and redemption, a legend of a powerful minister from humble beginnings who made himself a piece on the board and turned his ambition into a blade, upending the fate of a dynasty in a game of political intrigue.
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