In the thirteenth year of Tianbao, a map of the Lingjiang waterway comes to light, and every faction scrambles to seize it.
Jiang Qianfan, a bamboo craftsman from Longji’ao, is hanged from a ginkgo tree, his fingers crushed by bamboo pliers. His son, Jiang Feng, is trampled into the mud. His mother has three fingers cut off, and the half a bun she gets in exchange is forcibly stuffed into Jiang Feng’s mouth by Wei Wuji, the young master of the Wei family. “Swallow it. It’s your mother’s last wish.”
Wei Wuji wants the map, and he wants Jiang Feng dead.
Jiang Feng claws his way out of hell. He steals a fake map from the prison supervisor’s belt and pries the real one out from inside a coffin plank by the river. The only person at his side is Liu Wanqing, a raft worker’s daughter who has also lost her family.
The three sections of the map each fall into different hands: one with the crown prince, one with Wei Wuji, and one with Jiang Feng. The day they are put together will be the day the Lingjiang changes course and floods the lands of Jiangnan’s great families.
But Jiang Feng doesn’t know that Wei Wuji, the man chasing him for the map, wears a ring engraved with the emblem of the current prime minister and has a plum-blossom birthmark on his left shoulder blade. His true identity is far more terrifying than Jiang Feng can imagine. And the map he won with his life comes from the same source as a world-shaking secret...
On the run as a wretched nobody, Jiang Feng watches his enemy’s true face slowly peel away. Clenching his iron pliers, he scratches one line after another into the mud wall: Today you trample me into the mud. One day, I’ll make you kneel and lick it clean. This blood feud is so deep that I’ll crawl out of this hell if I have to. The day I crawl out, I’ll be the master of the Lingjiang, from its headwaters to its mouth! I’ll call the shots!
