In the seventeenth year of the Chengping era of the Great Sheng, the fighting on the northern frontier has ceased, but peace has yet to come to the land.
Corrupt officials hold sway over the provinces, local tyrants prey on the people, and even the so-called orthodox sects have bowed their heads before power and money. Meanwhile, a mysterious organization called the Candle Dragon Society lurks between the imperial court and the martial world. It sells weapons, manipulates grain prices, and seeks to plunge the realm into chaos in order to impose a new order.
Ling Chuan is twenty-three, dressed in white and armed with a silver spear, riding freely across the martial world.
He loves wine and meat, and has no regard for rules. He seems no more than a penniless young wanderer. No one knows that he was once the youngest commander of the White Plume Battalion in the Northern Garrison Army, and one of the nineteen men who should not have survived the bloody battle at the isolated city three years ago.
A bowl of wine brings him together with Gu Tinglan, a young troupe leader who uses opera scripts to pass along intelligence. Then a ledger drags him back into a conspiracy someone deliberately buried.
From a tavern in a frontier town to the storms of the capital, from martial sects to the gilded halls of the imperial palace, Ling Chuan has only one question:
Are the rules of this realm meant to protect people, or to prey on them?
Some say a hero should put the realm first.
Ling Chuan says:
"The realm is too vast. I can’t take care of all of it. But I can’t just ignore the person sitting right in front of me today."
