The Frail Heir Has a Tower Behind Him

On the land of Jiuzhou stands a tower called Listening Snow Tower. It sells intelligence, takes assassination contracts, cuts off trade routes, and decides who lives or dies. The world knows Listening Snow Tower as a place shrouded in mystery, but no one knows its true master is none other than Shen Guanlan, the frail, dissolute heir of the Marquis of Zhenbei’s residence in the Great Yu dynasty. At eighteen, Shen Guanlan returns to the capital. The city’s nobles all assume he is a worthless hostage sent there. At his welcome banquet, a prince humiliates him, a sect looks down on him, and court officials probe him for answers. He only bows his head, coughs up blood, and smiles as he backs down. But that very night, the account books of those who humiliated him are stolen, the would-be assassins lie dead in the streets, and lights flare at all thirty-six of the capital’s secret outposts. No one knows he has kept his sword sheathed for three years while building a network across Jiuzhou. No one knows he bears a natural sword bone sealed within his body. Least of all do they know that the truth behind the old Beijng case is that the imperial family sold out the world. Gu Changye, a poor-born youth, crawls out of a pile of corpses in the northern frontier with a broken saber on his back. Once the son of a deserter, he was someone anyone could bully. Only after meeting Shen Guanlan does he learn that his father was no deserter, and that the old army of the northern frontier never betrayed anyone. One hides his sword and makes his moves on the board. The other draws his blade and breaks through formations. From the capital to the northern frontier, from the imperial court to the sects, from Listening Snow Tower to the rift in Heaven’s Gate. They will uncover the truth behind the old case, cut off the imperial family’s conspiracy, and collect a long-overdue blood debt on behalf of the souls who died in the snowstorms of the northern frontier. Only later does the world understand: That frail heir who had been mocked for years was never a pawn. He was the one who dragged the entire world into the game.