The Great Ji Dynasty has stood for 230 years. Three blades rule the land: the Northern Army, the Xuanxiao Office, and Zhaoye City. The blades have grown dull, and the jianghu has grown old.
No one in the Xie clan of Wucheng in Jiangnan has ever lived past forty, according to the family records. The year Xie Yun turned eighteen, the uncle who raised him died at the age of thirty-nine. Carrying an ancestral sword that no one had ever used, he set out for Changluo to seek treatment, not to survive, but to see the world.
He was born with a "Profound Illumination Heart" that let him master any martial art at a glance. He was also born with a "Mirage Blood Body": if his inner force exceeded three-tenths of his meridians' capacity, they would rupture. He could not beat anyone, yet he could see everyone's weaknesses. He stood behind his brothers, telling them where to strike, one blow at a time. When there was no other choice, he would burn through his sea of qi to deliver a single sword strike. The jianghu called him "Half a Quarter Hour": for fifteen minutes, he was the greatest under heaven; afterward, he was crippled.
A discarded disciple, a lawman with a tattoo on his face, an assassin who had been given a name, a monk who could not wield a spear, and a prince who haunted gambling dens. The six swore brotherhood at the Sleepless Tower, only to be torn apart one by one by the struggle for the throne, restoration, and assassination in the dynasty's final years.
This is the story of a sickly man who lived forty years and experienced a century of jianghu. After his death, his brothers, their sons, and a child of mysterious origins kept his lamp burning until dawn.
