The Stand-In

In the seventeenth year of the Xian De era of the Great Zhou, Pei Zhao was confined to his home. Born with the ability to see spirits, he could see the spirit of a tree or the shadow in a well. Beneath an old locust tree in the estate lived a green-clad old man who had guarded a piece of jade for three hundred years. But this gift made Pei Zhao a disgrace to the Pei family. His father burned all his books on the Dao and forced him to pursue an official career. On the night of the Ghost Festival, Pei Zhao met the man from the broken bridge. No spirit dared approach the Daoist in blue robes; he was light itself. A fragment of jade and the words “the broken bridge outside the city” led Pei Zhao deep into Mount Mang. Beneath a withered cypress, the boy gripped a broken sword and sealed a pact with his blood, becoming the only named disciple of Xiao Duan, an “abandoned outer disciple” of the Green Lotus Sword Sect. But the truth of the cultivation world was far crueler than Pei Zhao had imagined. Seventy-two Dragon-Locking Stakes pinned down the world's ley lines. The seven great immortal sects monopolized spiritual energy, while rogue cultivators scavenged like rats for scraps. The “sword seed” planted in Pei Zhao was nothing more than a living sacrifice raised by the sect. His great-uncle, Pei Xuan, had likewise been taken away by an immortal sect twenty years earlier, only to become one of the “dragon feeders” beneath a Dragon-Locking Stake. “Without going mad, there is no way to survive.” Pei Zhao swallowed the sword seed, pulled out the Imperial Stake, and opened Heaven's Gate. He fused the power of devouring the stakes into himself, becoming the first “Stake-Bearer” in thirty thousand years. He would not become a new prison. Instead, he would become a bridge, allowing the world's spiritual energy to flow freely once more. Beneath Chang'an, along the old course of the Yellow River, deep in the Qinling Mountains... one man and one sword, pulling out all seventy-two stakes. He was destined to stand against the immortal sects, a monster hunted by all seventy-two Dragon-Locking Stakes. But the young man said only: “I, Pei Zhao, seek neither immortality nor divine powers. I seek only a reason to die on my knees rather than live on my feet.” This is a xianxia story about a young man breaking the cage with his own body and prying open a sliver of light for all living beings.