At the age of twelve, Chen Jianwei lost his village and his father. All he had left was a sword blank, unsharpened and without a hilt.
He climbed Qilian Mountain through the wind and snow. In a nameless Taoist temple, he learned to stand firm and wield a sword, and he personally ground that piece of iron into “Bird in a Cage.”
Six years later, he descended the mountain with his sword, wanting only to find the band of people who had passed through his village all those years ago.
But the world below was in chaos: Hu and Han fought each other, humans and demons traded, cultivators sat high above the clouds, and the lives of ordinary people were worth less than grass. Chen Jianwei understood neither the greater good of the realm nor the rules laid down by those on high.
He believed in only one principle:
A person lives within three feet, and a sword guards those three feet.
Within that space, even an ordinary man deserves the right to raise his sword against the strong.
This is the story of a blacksmith's son who carries an unfinished sword into a world in turmoil and spends his whole life asking, “What else can a sword do besides kill?”
