When Shen Yan was sixteen, he returned to Yanhuai City with the head of a demon general strapped to his back.
The clerk at the city gate opened the household register and found two entries for Shen Yan: one was the eldest son of the city lord's residence, who had died at the age of two, though his name had never been removed; the other had been reported missing seven years ago and marked "not returned." The clerk picked up his brush and added a "second" after his name.
"The register says who you are."
That wasn't what Shen Yan wanted to investigate. He wanted to find out about his mother. On the ninth day of the seventh month, seven years ago, she had taken him and his younger sister onto an oilcloth-covered cart and left through the north gate, heading north. After that, she was never seen at the residence again. He asked everyone in the city and got only one answer: There was no Madam in the household.
Her name wasn't on the memorial stele. Her family name wasn't in the city gate register. A space on the ancestral hall's spirit tablet stand sat empty. All he could investigate were the numbers: seven people went out through the north gate, and six covered stretchers were carried back in; nine thousand names were carved on the stele, but 317 people were missing from the register.
He would find the name that had been erased in a register that didn't even record his own.
And he had only three swords.
