In the final years of the Great Sheng dynasty, imperial authority was waning, Chancellor Cui’s faction controlled the court, nomadic cavalry from the north invaded year after year, and the realm descended into chaos.
Liu Shuo, a dirt-poor farmhand from the eastern bank of Zuan City, enlisted at thirteen. After fifteen years in the army, he rose from private to a commander leading three thousand men. Three months ago, when the Northern Rong invaded, he fought for seven days at Mangdang Mountain Pass with three thousand battered troops and somehow drove back forty thousand cavalrymen.
They won the battle, but someone else stole the credit. The heads of seventy-two of his brothers were displayed at the execution ground, while he was bound hand and foot and forced to kneel in the yellow earth. His charge was four words: treason and collaboration with the enemy.
Before the blade fell, an order from the Crown Prince saved his life.
Some wanted him dead. Others wanted him alive. Those who wanted him dead were surnamed Cui; those who wanted him alive were surnamed Xiao.
The Xiao family was Zuan City’s thousand-year-old elite clan, descended from Xiao He, with half the realm’s wealth and grain in its hands. Xiao Ning, the family’s legitimate daughter, came to Liu Shuo with a choice: work for the Xiao family in exchange for a chance to live.
Liu Shuo agreed. Not out of gratitude, but because he discovered that the Cui faction that had framed him wasn’t just stealing credit. They were selling the city. Smuggling grain and horses to the Northern Rong was merely the appetizer; handing over Zuan City’s gates was the main course.
A man with nothing to his name had to bring down the chancellor.
No army, no power, no backers. Only a mind colder than steel, and a band of people willing to risk their lives alongside him.
From the muddy eastern bank to the court on the western bank, from pawn to player, from Zuan City to the realm at large...
In times of chaos, is a blade meant for killing, or for laying down the rules?
He would spend his whole life answering that question.
