Records of the Five Unparalleled Masters of Minghua

The sky is naturally free and the earth naturally splendid. In the distant rivers and lakes, and the lofty halls of government, who has seen all the splendor fade and endured every hardship? A musician who has played every one of the Nine Tunes, or a diviner who has performed every stratagem? A painter with an ink-dark heart and vermilion colors, or a physician skilled in bronze and stone? Or perhaps a swordsman whose nature is fickle?

Southern Border, Northern Wastes, Eastern Sea, Western Mountains: three thousand dust-bound dreams, all appearances are illusions...

By day, wandering through the worldly dust and smoke; by night, lodging amid the rain and dew beyond civilization. Who writes of a thousand years atop the Hall of Clouds? And who weeps for a hundred ghosts beneath the Hall of Luo Sheng?

Behold the musician Gui Chen, whose arrival is splendid and whose departure leaves no trace; the diviner Tian Jun, whose path has no end and whose changes reveal no intent; the painter Nong Ying, who summons wind without frost and turns frost into rain; the physician Mo Wen, who balances hardness and softness and leaves no path unexplored; and the swordsman Li Tian, who commands his heart to open and close, and his sword to strike swift or slow!

The five tones and twelve pitch standards, the Qimen Dunjia arts, ink splashed on white silk, the Nine Needles and Twelve Yuan Points, the Unending Finger, the Heavenly Creation of Primordial Unity, shape-shifting, yin-yang illusions, miraculous finger techniques, Linglong Music, Returning Wind of Sorrow, the stars and celestial chess: amid a hundred schools contending, who will determine the victor?

The Xuanji Dynasty, the Beiming Empire, the Southern Barbarian tribes, the ruins of Loulan, the Shadow Sect, the Poison Den, the Ten Halls: after journeying through them all, who will paint the final stroke of vermilion across these mountains and rivers? Who will play the last clear tear in the wind and rain?

And who, beneath an oil lamp and before an ancient Buddha, will tap the wooden fish, turn the sutras, and keep the future Tathagata in their heart...