Twenty years ago, Jincheng in the Northern Frontier burned to the ground in a single night, and 3,700 people perished in the flames.
The history books dismiss it with four understated words: “Plague struck; city destroyed.” Yet rumors still circulate throughout the martial world: the garrison commander massacred the city, or the lamplighters sought to destroy the world.
Shen Yanbai, a disciple of the Chidu Sword Sect, has worn a half-row of burn scars around his wrist since childhood. He has lived a life as perfect as a model copybook, until a fragment of the Ashen Register resurfaces in the martial world. His master's warning, “Take the fragment, but don't ask where it came from,” plunges him into a whirlpool of truth buried for twenty years.
From the misty rains of Jiangnan to the windswept sands of the Northern Frontier, the abacus beads of the Windwatch Pavilion toy with life and death, the lamplighters' ashen lanterns reveal sin, and the iron hooves of the rebel army shatter the peace. He learns the Broken Scroll Blade and practices the City-Burning Art, drawing ever closer to the ruins, only to discover:
The so-called garrison commander who massacred the city was an ordinary man who chose to die alongside its people.
The so-called culprit who destroyed the city was a keeper of secrets who bore the blame.
The so-called innocent townsfolk had secretly practiced forbidden arts and willingly sealed off the city, making them culpable.
And the revenge and vindication he had obsessed over had stood against the truth from the very beginning.
His master's kneeling, his confidant's heart set ablaze, the strongest beheaded, the cowardly taking a blade meant for another... Every light that once showed him the way goes out one by one as he comes to understand the truth.
It turns out that being a hero never meant making no mistakes.
It means not running away after making one.
It means knowing how heavy the truth is, yet still being willing to write, in blood, his own epilogue to a story no one dares to mention.
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