A monk who tends the fire, and a tattered book pulled from a stove.
Wu Youde spent eight years tending the fire behind Shaolin Temple. His life was as dull as stove ash.
Then one night, he pulled a yellowed “Ledger of Karma” from the ashes. The moment he opened it, he saw these words written clearly beneath his senior brother Bai Ji’s name: At twenty-seven, he will die beneath a flurry of blades.
He didn’t believe in fate.
He used stove-ash water to write the first line in the ledger, and Bai Ji’s fate took a new turn.
The Ledger of Karma can change fate, but it cannot change people’s hearts.
The trouble in Apricot Grove, the snow at Yanmen Pass, Murong Fu’s sword, Du Heng’s hatred... A single ledger dragged a monk who knew no martial arts into the deepest waters of the martial world.
He changed Bai Ji’s fate, saved Du Ruo’s life, showed Murong Fu a future in which he would grow old alone, and helped Du Heng lay down his weapon in despair.
But the old monk Baibu told him, “Karma can be borrowed, but not reversed. People’s hearts can be guided, but not changed.”
A runaway princess learned to wait beside the stove.
Ziyuan was a headstrong princess of Dali. For the sake of a monk who tended the fire, she took off her brocade robes and put on a nun’s habit. She went from waving to him atop the palace walls to waiting through the late night for them to elope, from waiting at her father’s funeral to waiting for the kitchen smoke to rise.
Huijing left, dying in the spring sunshine. Du Heng left, carrying a vow never to kill again. Xukong arrived, clumsily learning to make a bowl of noodles for the person he loved.
The fire in the stove still burns.
The vegetable garden behind the mountain turned green, then yellow again. People came and went in the kitchen.
Bai Ji avenged himself and came back, while Huang Lian planted herbs and waited for
