The Sword Unreturned

Where the Heavenly Dao collapses, my sword remains unsheathed

For three hundred years, everyone believed that the blue-robed swordsman who once carved his words into stone, leaving behind an enduring sword aura, had long since merged with the mountains and rivers.

That was, until black sword rain poured from the inverted Sea Eye and all seventy-two statues of the sages in the Temple of Literature began to weep blood.

Qi Jingchun, whose very existence had been erased, left a line of sword marks on a wordless stele: When in doubt, cut down the spring breeze.

Chen Ping'an took up the rusty old sword strip and discovered that the shards of his life-bound porcelain from the old days in the Lijuzhu Cave Heaven concealed the final wager made by the founders of the Three Teachings before they transformed into the Dao:

If the mortal world is a furnace, can it forge a sword that severs cause and effect? Or will it create another prison of divine authority?

The forged histories of the Heaven-Mending Pavilion are devouring reality. The bones of the first Sword Master are crawling out from beneath the ruins of the Sword Qi Great Wall. The true names of every swordsman are appearing on Ning Yao's sword heart, and the final line reads, unmistakably: Chen Ping'an, to be executed.

The game spanning three hundred years has finally reached its endgame:

Will he become the one who mends the heavens beneath the guidance of the Sage of Rites,

or the godslayer foretold by Lu Chen?

As the bronze gates swing open with a thunderous roar,

the answer given by a fifteenth-realm swordsman is this:

Break your life-bound sword, and borrow a breath of spring from the mortal world.