Shen Qiyun, the youngest presiding judge at the Tianshu Court, made the most regrettable choice of his life: on the execution platform, as ten thousand swords pierced his heart, he took the fatal heavenly lightning in place of Xie Buyu, who had defected to the demonic path.
Twelve years earlier, Xie Buyu had been the prodigy who ranked first in all three trials at Trial Peak, while Shen Qiyun was the steady, composed rising star of the sword path, a disciple of the sect leader.
They had faced death side by side in the snowstorms of the northern frontier. At the cliff between the righteous and demonic paths, they stood in silent confrontation: one could not bear to kill, and the other refused to leave. Then Xie Buyu stole a demonic sword, slaughtered his way through the southern border, and betrayed his sect, becoming the top demon on the righteous alliance’s wanted list.
Everyone said he was beyond redemption, but Shen Qiyun knew that the half-inch by which his blade had missed was deliberate.
After the heavenly lightning struck, Xie Buyu escaped the Demon-Sealing Tower and appeared in Shen Qiyun’s courtyard in the dead of night. “I only came to ask you this: three years ago, you said you’d kill me with your own hands. Why haven’t you done it?”
The righteous alliance’s manhunt begins anew, but the dead in the southern border conceal another truth. When the truth behind the bloody killings finally comes to light, Shen Qiyun discovers that every crime pinned on Xie Buyu points to a secret connected to him.
The righteous and demonic paths cannot coexist, but deep love must not cross the line. What if that line was wrong from the very beginning?
