The Sound of the Yongge Blade

In the twenty-first year of the Jinghe era under the Dayong dynasty, the frontier army had gone eighteen months without pay. Shen Lie, the son of a condemned soldier, is an hereditary junior officer in the Frontier Guard. In a bloody battle on a snowy night, he takes thirty-seven heads, yet someone else gets credit for his achievement. Years ago, his father reported that his superior was colluding with outsiders beyond the frontier and stealing military provisions. Instead, his father was branded a traitor and executed at the camp gate. Now Shen Lie lays the ledgers and copper tokens proving the real treason out on the parade ground, one by one. He returns that old accusation to its rightful owner. His investigation reaches higher: behind the battalion commander stands Zhang Jingyao, the Grand Secretariat who controls the court; behind the Grand Secretariat lies the old Chengguang case of the late emperor's sudden death. And the half of a broken saber his father left behind has seven layers of cinnabar script sealed into its spine. Exposed to cold springs and charcoal fire, each layer appears in turn, revealing the rot at the heart of the dynasty. The border troops go hungry, while the great clans hoard vast estates. The blood spilled along the frontier walls never reaches the emperor's desk. Zhang Jingyao: “How can a soldier with a blade understand rites and music?” Shen Lie: “Rites and music cannot feed the frontier troops. A blade can protect the people.” From a junior officer on the frontier wall to the Grand Secretariat entrusted with the emperor's affairs, with no transmigration or supernatural powers, he relies on a hundred battles, military discipline, and brothers who live and die by his side. He carries a blade all his life, not for the love of killing, but so the people of the realm will never have to carry one again.