Eighty years after the Great Yong was founded, everyone who practices martial arts must be registered in the martial registry. Without registration, no one can carry a sword, establish a sect, or take disciples. Once someone's name is removed from the rolls, even the traces of their existence gradually disappear.
On his first day at the Martial Registry Office, Xie Wujiu, a junior clerk from Qingshan County, discovers that while there are clearly only nine grandmasters in the world, eleven people are drawing salaries.
One of the two extras died twenty years ago.
The other is Xie Wujiu himself.
His file reads: Xie Wujiu, First-Rank Grandmaster, died in the imperial capital seventeen years ago, body unrecovered, martial registry entry not revoked.
When he begins correcting the first typo in the registry, a fraudulent grandmaster falls from his pedestal, those struck from the rolls return, and secrets the court has concealed for years awaken.
Xie Wujiu finally realizes that the martial registry was never just a record of who knows martial arts.
It decides who deserves to be remembered by the world.
