He was just a butcher’s apprentice, twenty-one years old, quiet, and never hesitant to strike.
On the night his master was murdered, he handed him a letter. “Take it to the capital and give it to your maternal grandfather.”
He had no idea what the letter said. He only knew his master had hidden it for thirteen years.
So he took Liu Niang’s donkey, strapped on the sword called Qinghan, and set out south.
Along the way, he met
Xiao Wu, a fifteen-year-old kitchen hand with no parents, who insisted on following him to cook.
Liu Jingfeng, a female escort disguised as a man, hunted by the Thirteen Escort Agency as she investigated her father’s death.
Yu Banxian, a rambling old fortune-teller who looked at Xiao Wu as if he were his own grandson.
Hot on their heels were
Zhao San, a young, cold-faced officer of the Northern Garrison Bureau, who would not stop pursuing the letter.
The assassins of the Thirteen Escort Agency, coming wave after wave.
And the powerful chief eunuch in the capital, waiting for them to walk straight into his trap.
But he was not afraid.
From Huangyang Town to Shuozhou, from Broken Dragon Mountain to Luoyang, over a journey of more than three thousand li, his master died, his grandfather died, Yu Banxian died, and his brothers in the Black Wind Cavalry died. Wounded all over and soaked in blood, he finally delivered the letter.
Then he discovered it was a fake.
It had been fake from the very beginning.
