The Orphan of the Black Bird

Shang Tang overthrows Xia, and the Dark Bird answers Heaven's Mandate.

Yet on the shadowed side of true history lies a legend deliberately erased from bronze inscriptions.

On the eve of his oath to attack Ge, Shang Tang, founding ruler of the Great Shang, meets her by the banks of the Qi River: Liu Ruyan. Clad in white as pure as snow, she bears a vermilion mark of the Dark Bird between her brows. A faint gold glimmers in her eyes, and the phantom of nine tails flickers behind her. She gives him a jade pendant, warns him of an ambush, and helps him win his first battle. But she says only that it is for the sake of a "three-hundred-year debt of fate."

She is a fox spirit, and an orphan. In her blood flows a secret woven from the ancient Qingqiu and the Dark Bird.