Listening to Swords at Cold Mountain

On a snowy night at the execution ground, Gu Changyan carries home his father Gu Chengyue's body, along with a broken blade and an unmarked black scabbard. If he can't repay ten taels of silver in three days, their home will be seized, and his younger sister, Gu Xiaoman, sold to the Han family's weaving mill. Desperate to survive, he makes his way to the Sword-Burying Sect on North Mountain, only to be publicly branded “mortal bones, dead bones” during the entrance test and demoted to a menial in the ruined sword storeroom. The sect has ironclad rules: three months as a menial, an examination after six months, and failure means your memories are erased and you're cast out. The storeroom has another prohibition: after the night curfew, those who listen to the swords live, while those who disturb them die. Everyone says there is no path forward for one with mortal bones. Yet whenever the broken blade enters its scabbard, a character meaning “Han” appears in the black ash, pointing to an old military standard and the hidden truth behind his father's treason case. Amid the wind and snow of the frozen mountain, Gu Changyan struggles to survive among piles of broken swords as he follows trails of blood and lies in search of the truth. He doesn't just want to clear his father's name. With nothing but mortal bones, he will cleave apart, inch by inch, the death trap hanging over the Gu family.