Snow on the Cold River

In the winter of the eleventh year of Shaoxing, at Fengling Ferry on the north bank of the Yangtze, Shen Guhong's peaceful life as a ferryman was shattered by news of a massacre. He was the sole survivor of the massacre of the Seventy-Two Strongholds of the North Bank twenty years earlier. He had concealed his identity ever since, clinging to life with half of an ancestral broken blade. Now he learned that the Seventy-Two Strongholds, which had sheltered the rebel army's granaries, had been wiped out overnight by Tingxue Manor, led by Bai Wuya, the greatest martial artist in the jianghu.

Carrying the blood feud from twenty years ago, Shen Guhong crossed the snowy mountains to confront Bai Wuya and demand justice. But as he investigated, he uncovered an even more horrifying truth: behind the massacre lay a vast scheme by the Jin Kingdom to infiltrate the lands south of the Yangtze. Xiao Xiaofeng, chief of the Sixteen Strongholds of the North Bank and a man who seemed devoted to justice, was in fact a Jin spy who had spent years embedded in the jianghu. Working with the secret envoy Wanyan Lie, he planned to steal the rebel army's defense maps and guide Jin forces south to overrun the North Bank.

With the help of a mysterious swordsman in blue and Su Wanqing, a female commander of the rebel army, Shen Guhong honed his blade and grew stronger amid the jianghu's bloody battles, while unraveling one mystery after another. He and his nemesis Bai Wuya went from bitter enemies to comrades fighting side by side, from scheming against each other to entrusting their backs to one another. At last, at the Cold River Ferry, they fought a final battle against the Jin forces. With the broken blade in his hand, Shen Guhong cut down the treacherous and protected the peace of a million people on the North Bank. When the snow finally stopped falling, he understood that a true hero never seeks revenge for himself alone, but safeguards the peace of the people.