A Stone Returns from the Ends of the Earth

Traditional wuxia, a slow pace, no System, no harem, no golden finger.

The person who taught you the righteous path hid the truth. The one who took a blade for you is the enemy you hate most.

In the seventh year of Chunyou, on the Grand Canal, Shen Guishi, a low-ranking youth in the Grain Transport Gang, sails the waterways with a short blade. For half his life, he knows nothing of his origins. He thinks he is an abandoned child, never realizing he is an orphan: his birth father, Shen Chongyue, was an officer who died thirteen years ago during the Northern Expedition of the Duanping era, in a disastrous campaign whose true story remains unclear.

His adoptive father, Han Tieyi, has kept silent for thirteen years to guard the secret. Lu Chenyuan, head of the Qingyun Sect, holds back his words. Xiao Pojun, master of the Blade Sect, confronts him with drawn steel, though he has his own hidden reasons. As the secrets of the old battlefield are gradually exposed, Shen Guishi discovers that the defeat at Luoyang during the Duanping campaign was not a loss to the enemy, but a betrayal by his own side.

Those he respects are burdened by guilt; those he despises have honor. The line between black and white has never been absolute.

The young man on the canal does not yet know that the short blade in his hand will one day cleave through the darkest night of thirteen years ago.