Three hundred years ago, on a snowy night, the Great Yin Dynasty exterminated every sword cultivator in the land and issued a ban on swords: anyone who kept a sword would be executed; anyone who practiced swordsmanship would be executed.
After that, there were no more swords in the world.
Only the Yan family of Cangzhou was an exception. For generations, the Yan clan had guarded a sword mound for the imperial court. It held thirteen earthen graves without headstones. No people lay beneath the soil, only swords. The first family rule was written on the main wall of the ancestral hall: A sword guardian must not draw a sword.
Yan Tingzhou was sixteen. It was his third year tending the lamps, and he still couldn't light one. He was the only lamp-less good-for-nothing on Broken Stele Plain. He was supposed to spend his whole life chopping wood and watching over graves.
On the day of the ancestral rites, Qingwu Mountain came to claim the swords, and the Sword Inspection Office was on its way. They meant to melt the thirteen swords into scrap iron and investigate the thirty-seven members of the Yan family on the spot.
With nowhere left to turn, that night Yan Tingzhou broke into the sword mound and reached for a broken sword before the thirteenth grave.
The sword spoke.
"Someone has suppressed your lamp's wick."
It taught him one thing: swords remember, and the people within them each retain one final thought. He could borrow their sword intent to kill an enemy with a single strike.
The price was that each time he borrowed it, he would forget one thing about himself, the thing he cherished most.
He couldn't remember when it began. First, he forgot what his little sister liked to eat.
### Version B (short-drama hook, alternate)
I followed the family rule for sixteen years. It said a sword guardian must never draw a sword. The day they came to kill us, I finally understood: this rule wasn't there to protect our lives. It was there to protect theirs.
