The Long Night: Zhu Yan

Autumn in Luoyang is brief, as brief as a blade that draws blood. The assassin Shen Shui, known in the martial world as the Sleepless Man, takes on a deadly commission: escort an iron chest with no lock that cannot be opened to a place called Listening Rain Tower. Inside are not gold or silver, but evidence of the crimes committed thirteen years ago by Xie Tiankuang, the Martial Alliance Leader. The patron is dead, and the chest has become a hot potato. Both the righteous and the sinister have gone mad, for legend says whoever gets the chest will gain the world. Shen Shui carries the chest into a deserted town and steps into the No One Leaves Sober tavern. The proprietress, A Jiu, has eyes that see through life and death. The fortune-teller Feng Qi can read everyone’s fate but his own. The shadow of the street sweeper wanders through the mist, while the embroiderer’s needles glint beneath the moon. And Shen Shui himself is slowly remembering things: a great fire thirteen years ago, a woman who died before his eyes, and a burnt string from a zither. And the ancient curse: Zhu Yan. When the chest is opened, the martial world will learn that what it holds is not a secret, but Shen Shui himself.