The Nameless Sword on the Stele

On West Street in Qingwu City, the Shi family seized the last rubbing of an inscription left by Jiang Yan's father, right in the street. Blood fell on the paper, and ten thousand stone steles appeared within him. A nameless flash of sword light severed the playboy's sword. From that day on, a voice kept ringing in his ears: “Borrowing means you have to pay it back.” Old Xu told him it was the Sword Mound. Every sword that had ever died across the ages stood there, marked by a stele. Each time he borrowed a sword, he had to pay with divine sense, years of life, and a fragment of memory, and fulfill the sword's master's unfinished business. Jiang Yan had only wanted to erect a stele for his father, find out the names people had erased, and make the Shi family kneel one more time. But what the Shi family had seized was not the rubbing. It was the blank space on the paper. The old Cui family's stove still had three bowls on it, yet the wife couldn't say who the third bowl had been set out for. He kept the names of the dead alive, carrying them from the little city of Qingwu all the way beyond the Nine Ruins. Only when he began recording what had happened to him did he discover that the force severing the Heavenly Dao was no natural disaster. It was people. And the things that had been erased were coming back, one by one. “I remember.”, Jiang Yan