In the twenty-third year of the Yuankai era of Great Jing, snow and wind blanket Qingyun Mountain. Shen Yan, the orphaned survivor of Cold River Sword Lodge, hides as a servant in the mountain stronghold of his enemies, carrying a broken sword and half of the Manual of the Clear and Cold Sword Sense. The massacre that wiped out his family twenty years ago was never a clash between good and evil. It was a game plotted jointly by powerful court officials and martial arts magnates. He endures humiliation and conceals his strength, making his way through a world of flashing blades. He finds kindred spirits, faces formidable foes, and tears through layer upon layer of conspiracy. The martial world has no black and white; it is people's hearts that divide good from evil. Watch as a blade of blue steel shines across ten thousand miles of frozen river.
