Lin Pingzhi died.
He died in the Black Dungeon beneath West Lake, blind, with all four limbs crippled, too weak even to hate.
Then he opened his eyes and returned to the morning light of Fuzhou when he was seventeen. The Fuwei Escort Agency had not yet gone up in flames. His parents were still waiting for him in the front hall to eat breakfast. The Qingcheng Sect’s assassins were still a hundred li away.
He knew that in three days, Yu Canghai would slaughter the Lin family.
He knew Mu Gaofeng would humiliate him, Yue Buqun would take him in, and he would be used as a pawn and marry the woman he should never have married.
He knew the cassock lay at the bottom of a chest, bearing the seventy-two moves of the Evil-Resisting Swordplay and these eight words:
To master the divine art, first castrate yourself with your own blade.
In his previous life, he thought it was a dead end.
In this life, he understood: it was a path. And this time, the blade was in his own hands.
He did not burn the cassock. Nor did he seek refuge on Mount Hua.
He chose to walk alone into that man-eating martial world, kneeling to no master, leaning on no beauty, and borrowing none of Linghu Chong’s protagonist’s luck.
He would protect his parents, avenge the blood debt, and survive the little-known catastrophe that would strike ten years later, walking down the Cliff of Reflection alive.
He would make the name Lin Pingzhi stand for more than a pitiful, tragic figure.
He would make it the name of a drawn sword.
