In his previous life, Xu Ying was an unfulfilled engineering project manager. After dying from overwork, his soul transmigrated to Elacia, a sword-and-magic otherworld, and possessed the body of a young man whose left foot tendons had been severed by his enemy, Raymond "Bloodhand," leaving him crippled. Starting out disabled and destitute, he honed a unique movement technique that relied on terrain and rhythm, as elusive as a ghost: the "Shadow Step." He made a name for himself among the downtrodden as the "Half-Step Shadow Knight."
He had hoped to keep a low profile and survive, but Raymond, a Dark Knight serving the empire's Third Prince, was unwilling to let the fish that got away escape again, and came after him once more.
Xu Ying was pleased by his daughter's achievements, but gradually realized that Xu Qinglan's ambitions went far beyond them. She intended to overthrow the aging emperor and rule the world herself.
On one side stood his beloved daughter, bound to him by blood and the focus of all his tireless devotion, along with her vision of a "strong and efficient" new empire. On the other stood the people-first ideals he had believed in all his life, his deep concerns about the tyranny and turmoil that might follow, and the tangled promises and checks and balances he had with the other princes and noble factions. Xu Ying stood at a crossroads in his life.
From a crippled cripple to a pillar of the empire, and then turning against the empress's daughter.