The Great Li Dynasty was governed by strict rules and rituals.
He was the youngest sword immortal in the Hanlin Academy, and in the eyes of the world, “Young Master Chen” was restrained, proper, and utterly rational.
He cultivated the Great Ink Stillness Scripture and upheld the order of the world.
No one knew that deep in Chen Shouzhuo’s study lay an unfinished monochrome painting scroll he had never once unrolled.
The woman in the painting, Amo, had no past and no color. She was his “private desire,” ground ink and drawn stroke by stroke by his own hand.
To the outside world, he was a spotless, still sword that slew demons and brought order to the land.
In private, within that tiny scroll, he used the most domineering magic to complete, inch by inch, her peerless figure.
“Master always says we must follow the rules. But in the painting and beyond it, aren’t all these strokes yours?”
When the Talisman Sect hunted her, the Sword Sect surrounded and attacked her, and even the Great Li’s national fortune sought to erase her, the gentleman who had always followed the rules broke the Confucian sage’s book in his hands for the first time.
He raised his brush and entered the painting, wielding the ink of the entire city as his sword as he stood before the half-veiled enchantress.
“Rules are for the masses. As for Amo... she is my life, my Dao, and the one truth I hold when I refuse to reason.”
