A Thousand Years of Loneliness Amid the Mortal World
Late at night, an ambush on the riverbank of a small town uncovers a secret of the martial world that has been buried for twenty years.
Hong Ying and her husband, Brother Hua, run an inn and live a quiet, ordinary life. No one knows that this gentle proprietress was once the martial world's most feared assassin, known as "Lone Swan." Her adoptive mother, Meng Sanniang, secretly trained her to become a top assassin. But after learning that Meng Sanniang was the very person who murdered her birth parents, Hong Ying lost heart, sheathed her sword, and retired from the world.
But the martial world will not leave her alone. The assassin organization Butterfly has brought its full force, including expert fighters from the Western Regions, to surround the town completely. Gravely poisoned, Hong Ying believes she cannot escape death. She gives Brother Hua all her life savings and tells him to flee alone.
Instead, Brother Hua walks toward her beneath an oil-paper umbrella, then turns to face more than three hundred experts.
His voice rings out through the rainy night, carrying the inner power of someone who has attained a semi-immortal body. It turns out this ordinary husband is a martial arts grandmaster who has survived for a thousand years. He has been husband to the woman he loves in ninety-nine lifetimes, watching helplessly as she dies again and again, enduring endless loneliness. In this life, he is determined to protect Hong Ying to the very end.
A century of loneliness, a millennium of waiting. When the power of gods and demons meets a mortal body, which one will be the other's salvation?
