Blades of the Guardians: Lone Smoke in the Desert

True wuxia, 2026. In the ninth year of Daye under the Sui (613 CE), a man using the alias Li Sen has spent ten years buried in the shifting sands beyond Yumen Pass in the Western Regions. Ten years ago, he was Yang Sen, the youngest sixth-rank chief constable in Chang'an's Ministry of Justice. After the massacre on Vermilion Bird Street wiped out his entire family, he alone survived. Ten years later, a broken horizontal saber, an unidentified corpse, and a jade box sealed with seven locks drag him back into the world he swore to forget. From the Hexi Corridor to the shadowy alleys of Chang'an, from Turkic khans' camps to the palace halls of Luoyang, every clue points to the name he should have forgotten. At last, Li Sen understands: in these troubled times, the sharpest blades are often hidden in the deepest lies.