The Sun Palace on the shores of Lake Tar was embraced by high mountains, its gold-leafed spires rising one after another. Atop city walls three times thicker than those of Daliang, Tan warriors — the fiercest of their kind — stood in heavy armor, leaning on long spears, gazing coldly toward the east and the grassland stretching ten li ahead without a single obstruction.
After three days of continuous rain, a few bedraggled wild goats emerged to forage, wary and alert, taking a mouthful of grass, a mouthful of lake water, constantly lifting their heads to watch on all sides. But nothing could guard against the eagle diving down from the cliffs near the Sun Palace — its sharp talons snapping open and shut in an instant as it swooped, and in a flash a sturdy wild goat was snatched into the sky.
The eagle was enormous; when it spread its wings, it seemed to blot out the sun and sky. It circled once, found its usual spot, and released its talons, letting the goat plummet from high above.
On the flagstone terrace beneath the Sun Palace, where generations of Tan kings lay buried, the goat fell from the sky and hit the ground, dead before it landed, eyes wide open.
But before the great eagle could swoop down to retrieve it, a gravestone lying flat on the ground was suddenly pushed open, and a figure darted out, snatched the goat, and vanished — in the blink of an eye, both the man and the goat disappeared into the burial grounds.
The eagle dove down, circled a dozen times in fury, and flew off. In recent months, it had occasionally suffered this indignity — after finally catching prey and dropping it at its usual spot, the prey would simply vanish. Still, the eagles didn’t leave; the area beneath the Sun Palace had abundant water and plentiful game, and they had lived here for a thousand years.
In the dim burial passage, Guan Si’er, carrying the goat on his back, hurried a good distance down the path until he reached a burial chamber with exquisite murals and a tall, arched ceiling.
Hearing Guan Si’er’s footsteps, several dull strikes of a fire-starter sounded from within the tomb, and when the torch flared to life, illuminating the space, it revealed a dazzling sight. This tomb was unimaginably opulent — gold and silver vessels were scattered everywhere, foreign gold and silver coins piled up like small hills in the corners, and rotted silks lay heaped in dark, moldering piles, taking up no small amount of space.
In front of the massive jade coffin, an open space had been cleared; animal bones and human bones lay mixed together in a heap, filthy felt blankets and clothing strewn about in disarray. A few half-burnt strips of silk still faintly showed traces of their former brilliant colors… Beyond all this, half the tomb chamber was piled with freshly dug earth.
Guan Si’er’s voice rang out, tinged with excitement.
“Brother, Old Giant made a delivery today — a huge wild goat. Get the basin ready, quick.”
At these words, Chen Dasheng immediately pried open his crust-caked eyes, glanced around, then grabbed a golden basin engraved with scripture and ran out. Seeing Guan Si’er come in, he reached out, grabbed the goat, and set it down on the ground. Guan Si’er immediately raised his knife, and the goat’s remaining warm blood filled half the basin.
It had been a full month since they’d arrived beneath the Sun Palace. The salt they’d brought had long since run out, and to keep up their strength and basic health, they had to keep drinking the blood of livestock — a precious resource indeed.
Lifting the unfortunate goat and shaking it hard several times until not a single drop of blood remained, Chen Dasheng looked at the golden basin, unable to hide the joy in his voice. “Hey! Old Giant really came through — this’ll last us three days.”
Guan Si’er laughed too. “This goat’s a big one.”
He carried the goat to the center of the arched chamber and dropped it, then casually picked up some burial vessel — belonging to who-knew-which generation of Gongji Tan kings — and set it in place.
Chen Dasheng walked over and used these luxurious, even gem-encrusted burial vessels the way one might use crude clay pots, using them to hold the meat.
The Tan people, too, had wanted to display their achievements — when the group had first entered this great tomb, they’d found no shortage of wooden, gold, and silver tablets inscribed with writing. Unfortunately, none of the eleven rough men could read Tan script, so they’d simply chopped up all the tomb owner’s boastful memorial tablets and burned them as firewood.
Just as they were dividing up the meat, a sound rang out through the spacious chamber — someone stretching and groaning awake. Behind them, a filthy, disheveled figure climbed out of the jade coffin — by rights he should have reeked, but they were all so used to it by now that no one noticed anymore. It was the utterly bedraggled Xie Wuhao.
In the past, they’d all been refined gentlemen of Yandu, never stepping out without perfuming themselves first. Now, though, these few men were overjoyed at the sight of half a basin of goat’s blood.
Climbing out of the jade coffin, Xie Wuhao was naked except for a single loincloth covering his modesty. He was actually one of the better-dressed ones — some of the others wore nothing at all.
“Hey! What a big one! Only Old Giant could catch something like this.”
Old Giant was the largest eagle living on the cliffs near the Sun Palace. When they got bored, the men would climb out of the tomb to watch the birds and beasts near the cliffs, and they’d given names to all of them. Their favorite by far was this eagle they called Old Giant, because the prey it brought was always the biggest.
Chen Dasheng laughed as he pulled fat off the goat’s intestines — with eleven mouths to feed, not a scrap of food could go to waste.
A dull sound came from the stone door being pushed open, and a few loose animal skulls came tumbling and rolling down the steps. A barefoot, bare-chested big man, carrying a pick fashioned from a gold tablet on his back, found the skulls annoying and kicked them out of the way with his foot.
These men were all still unclothed, their bodies filthy, their hair matted into knots — yet none of them minded one another’s state, speaking to each other with the intimacy of true brothers, their conversation full of engineering talk, like how they’d managed to move that huge boulder they’d hit today.
Setting down a silver basin full of dirt and rock with a loud clatter, they let out a collective cheer at the sight of the goat and came over.
“Heh heh, is it a holiday today or something?”
“Ooh, good stuff — hey, boss, how about you go out again sometime?”
After so much time together, Chen Dasheng’s exceptional martial skill had grown ever more distinct from the rest of the group. His blade was the sharpest of all — where the others once needed help finishing a job, now a single strike from him could cleave clean through a tough old wild bull.
His movements were like a ghost — when he moved fast, you simply couldn’t catch a glimpse of his shadow. His only limitation was that his jumping height was merely about half a foot taller than Xie Wuhao’s — Xie Wuhao said it was a matter of insufficient internal energy.
Seeing his brothers so pleased, Chen Dasheng smiled and nodded. “Fine, I’ll go out today, find something to sweeten your mouths. You all rest up for now.”
At this, the group cheered collectively, pulled out blankets from where they’d stashed their belongings, spread them out, and lay down together on top.
Chen Dasheng stood, picked up a crude torch, took an empty leather sack once made from a goat, and headed out.
The fifth month in West Tan territory was always rainy. Living underground in the tomb, food and drink weren’t a concern, but the lack of air circulation and the stifling closeness meant patches of skin on the men’s bodies had begun to rot.
Whatever he could do, Chen Dasheng tried to do more for them. He carried the leather sack to the entrance, lay down quietly to wait for nightfall, his eyes fixed like a dark, bottomless pool on the Sun Palace ahead.
Generations of Gongji Tan kings were all buried in the area a li and a half from the Sun Palace. Their tombs were built more simply than those of the Daliang people, and took up less space — generally, each generation had one massive burial chamber, built right beside the last. For kings who’d been on good terms or shared blood ties, a door was even built connecting the two chambers — the idea being that even in death, they wanted to be able to visit each other.
The tomb Chen Dasheng and his men now occupied was one of these old, out-of-the-way ones on the periphery — two chambers connected by a passage. They lived in one and used the other to dump the earth they excavated.
Inside the tomb, torches made of silk soaked in rendered animal fat gave off a strange smell, but the light was decent enough.
This was the most comfortable time of the day — waiting for dinner, waiting for nightfall.
Xie Wuhao pulled out a water skin and handed it to Guo Xinyuan, who smiled, accepted it, and took a sip — just as he happened to notice a skull silently staring at him.
This one used to sleep in the coffin, but since they needed the space, they’d tossed it out.
Noticing that the man beside him had gone still, Xie Wuhao followed his gaze and then burst out laughing.
He called out: “Erdian.”
Cui Erdian, who was scratching between his toes, looked up following Xie Wuhao’s chin gesture and saw the skull staring balefully at Guo Xinyuan with its two empty eye sockets.
He laughed, picked up the skull, and tossed it into the neighboring chamber.
Under Jiu Si Tang, there were four Executors: Xie Wuhao, He Min, Lu Chui, and Guo Xinyuan. Of these four, Guo Xinyuan was the oldest, yet he was the fussiest of all of them — everyone else had slept in the coffin at some point except him.
That jade coffin really was nice — everyone fought over that good spot, since it was so dry inside.
Xie Wuhao squeezed the water skin, then carefully set it aside, and heard Guo Xinyuan say, “Should’ve tossed it over there ages ago — at least that way it’ll have some company, otherwise why else would the two chambers be connected, right? Wuhao, what do you think — what’s the boss going to bring back today?”
Xie Wuhao shook his head, glanced at Guo Xinyuan, then looked toward the direction Chen Dasheng had disappeared, his eyes full of admiration.
Actually, he and Old Blade had once been at odds with each other. On the road from Yandu to Zuoliang Pass, they’d all been young and hot-blooded, each harboring their own arrogance, all of them among the very best in the martial world — friction had been inevitable.
Beyond their pride, the four of them had also carried a resolve to die if it came to it — they’d even, along the way, pictured in their minds how they’d die a glorious death. They hadn’t respected Old Blade’s men, and Old Blade’s men hadn’t thought much of this bunch of martial-world types either.
For a while, they hadn’t even spoken to one another.
But once they crossed the border, passing through five cities with not a soul left alive, nothing but hellish desolation — they no longer wanted to die.
They wanted to live. Wanted to live a hundred years, a thousand years, wanted every single moment to be spent taking Tan lives with their own hands — wiping out their entire clan ten times over wouldn’t be enough to satisfy their hatred.
But the banks of the Tan River stretched vast in every direction — a person standing there felt like nothing more than a lone blade of solitary grass, so small you didn’t know what to do with yourself.
The deeper they went, the more their former pride was shattered piece by piece by reality. Everything they’d learned was essentially useless out here, especially when it came to survival — even Guan Si’er’s skills at this point far surpassed theirs.
As the Executors grew more and more demoralized, the way Old Blade’s men operated — beyond the bounds of ordinary humanity, serving survival alone — steadily broke down whatever moral lines Xie Wuhao and the others still held.
Old Blade’s men were cold — a coldness hard to put into words. To them, there was only one task: complete the secret mission at any cost. Whatever person or creature they encountered along the way that might jeopardize the mission had to be eliminated, without exception.
It was from that point on that Xie Wuhao and the others truly understood what separated an old soldier from a martial-world wanderer.
The books they’d read, the codes of the martial world, the sense of righteousness within human nature — none of it held any real use out here. There was only “us” and “them.”
When they encountered Tan people, they generally avoided confrontation and stayed hidden; but if it came to a fight, they left no one alive — including women and children.
Xie Wuhao had once thought that, had he not seen the five hellish empty cities along Daliang’s border, watching Chen Dasheng act this way, he probably would have wanted to step in and set things right by force. Even if he couldn’t, he would have condemned such inhumane conduct to his very core.
But now he understood. If they didn’t do this, their presence would be exposed, the mission would fail, and more Tan people would push deeper into Daliang, leaving behind even more empty cities in his homeland…
Those cities were empty, the people dead — and yet there were voices, soundless, screaming across the skies above Daliang: revenge, revenge, revenge…!
Xie Wuhao and the other three burned with righteous indignation, while Chen Dasheng and his men remained utterly indifferent, cold as blades themselves.
And everything these men did told Xie Wuhao and the others one brutal truth: no matter how strong your own martial skill, even if the head of the very first martial arts sect in the jianghu himself came here — if Old Blade decided to kill you, you truly would not survive.
These men had no concept of what “underhanded” meant, nor did they much concern themselves with “reason.” They didn’t discuss the rules of the mortal world with you, and they didn’t discuss the rules of the immortals either.
By this point, the Executors finally understood why His Majesty valued Old Blade’s men so highly — though Xie Wuhao was also certain His Majesty himself had no real idea what kind of creature Old Blade actually was.
These were men who existed purely for killing — and yet, from the way they spoke, you could tell they had a sheath. Thank goodness they still had a sheath.
And that sheath was not imperial authority or law — it was Qinwei Lane, it was the warm bed of their wives back home.
They didn’t say much, only occasionally bragging a little — bragging that their wives could read and do accounts, that despite their delicate little hands, one angry pinch would leave a black-and-blue bruise that wouldn’t heal for half a month.
What was there to be proud of in that, honestly!
But late at night, they’d say, their wives’ bodies smelled sweet, coiling around them like water snakes; and sometimes, when the men were in a good mood after being served, their wives would even sing them some pretty little tune… Their daughters smelled sweet too, the food at home smelled sweet too — in short, everything about Qinwei Lane was good, everything smelled sweet.
But as they pushed deeper and deeper, this kind of talk about missing their families grew less and less frequent, until eventually it stopped entirely, deliberately forgotten.
Under Chen Dasheng’s leadership, relying on a hundred-year-old map, they finally made their way into the interior of West Tan territory. Sometimes they’d pass through a small settlement, and they’d kill for supplies, kill to forge false identities, even disguise themselves as Tan people and drive camel and goat herds around from place to place…
The Tan people weren’t foolish — the closer to the Sun Palace, the heavier the garrison, especially facing the direction of Daliang, where movement by land or water alike was nearly impossible.
These beasts knew full well, deep down, what atrocities they’d committed in the east for hundreds of years, especially in recent times.
If they couldn’t get in through the front, what then? Xie Wuhao thought himself something of a fool, really, for once having boasted that he ranked twelfth on the martial world’s lightness-skill rankings.
Chen Dasheng simply told him to go see for himself.
And so he saw the first line of defense — walls of the city so towering, and countless dark rows of giant crossbows pointed in every direction. Killing Old Giant would be a matter of a single crossbow shot.
And if the aim wasn’t precise enough, then hundreds of giant crossbows firing together — a rain of arrows under which not even a god could escape.
Unable to get past even the first checkpoint, what were they to do?
There was no need for further deliberation — if the direct approach failed, they’d simply go around. Xie Wuhao, with no other choice, followed Chen Dasheng, driving their livestock in search of places to trade. They traveled a great distance, finally reaching an old city, where they sold the camels, cattle, and sheep they’d stolen to Gaofeixi’ao people, Madini people, all sorts of people they’d previously known only by name.
After selling these off, they’d turn back and steal more — and they weren’t the only ones doing this; the Tan people themselves followed the law of the strong, with larger tribes preying on smaller ones.
By trading livestock, they even managed to earn a good haul of gemstones and foreign currency, and with these gems, they bribed their way onto a Madini merchant ship to enter the Tan River, then made their way through the mountains behind the Sun Palace into the Tan heartland.
After more than ten days of climbing, they finally caught sight of the palace from the ancient map.
Xie Wuhao and the others could never have imagined that a palace truly built of gold existed in this world. Its roof was entirely golden, covered in gold leaf — but where had such enormous wealth come from?
East and West Tan were grassland regions with few mountains and almost no mineral resources. They couldn’t match the might of the taller Gaofeixi’ao people, and relied on the Madini people’s small boats to ferry a continuous stream of supplies up the Tan River for them.
Their Sun Palace only ever defended against the east, never once letting their guard down.
And so, beneath every gilded surface of this golden city lay the wronged souls of Daliang people — for several hundred years now.
But how could eleven men, with their thin, gaunt frames — pitiful next to the Tan people — possibly get into the Sun Palace?
A plan had been devised: infiltrate the Sun Palace quietly and stage the natural death of the Gongji Tan king. They’d brought poison that caused death gradually, needing to administer it undetected every day, so that after the king’s death, his people would hang his head to return it to the Sun God, drawing back the tribal kings from outside to contest the succession — and then, at that moment, another massacre could be carried out to complete the plan.
The scheme sounded simple enough on paper.
But those who do evil always overthink things — Daliang wanted to assassinate the Gongji king, but wouldn’t the demon who’d started this war have anticipated that someone might want to kill him?
He knew it well — which was why, from the moment the first Tan king built the Sun Palace, they’d chosen this location specifically, built right against the mountains, so that looking east from the palace walls, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but the burial grounds of past Tan kings — no other structures at all.
The Tan people’s tombs had no towering steles, no memorial halls — their gravestones lay flat, barely half a man’s height.
That day, when Xie Wuhao looked out from the mountaintop, he’d nearly collapsed in despair — they’d come all this way for nothing.
But Chen Dasheng wasn’t afraid. The most terrifying thing about this man was that he was a straightforward, sharp-minded creature — since there was nothing here but graves, then fine, they’d dig one open and move in. There was nowhere else to go anyway.
And so, these eleven warriors — no, assassins — from Daliang, cast aside every principle of ethics they’d ever read about, dug a great hole into someone else’s ancestral grave, and moved in.
The men of Jiu Si Tang had initially wanted to sweep through every single tomb, grinding all the Gongji Tan kings’ bones to dust to vent their pent-up fury.
But Chen Dasheng forbade it. He would only allow them to disturb a single tomb — in his words, to leave a foothold for future assassins to use. If they disturbed every single Tan king’s grave, and one day the earth shifted and a tomb collapsed, exposing this route, then the path would be closed off for good.
Just think about that logic — they hadn’t even killed a single Tan king yet, and this man was already planning for a second attempt.
From the second day of settling into the tomb, the eleven assassins transformed into grassland hares, digging tunnels through the earth, working to dig their way all the way into the Sun Palace.
The distance from here to the Sun Palace was roughly a li and a half. Fortunately for them, once they moved aside the massive tomb stones, the soil beneath the Sun Palace proved well-suited for tunneling.
During this time, to avoid detection, they didn’t dare so much as touch the livestock roaming freely outside the Sun Palace.
Their only source of food came from the eagles living on the cliffs behind the Sun Palace. Chen Dasheng had observed that these eagles were quite endearing — after catching prey, they’d look for solid rock to drop it on and kill it, such as the flagstone ground outside the tomb chamber.
And so, with shelter secured and food secured, they began digging, day and night without rest.
It felt rather comfortable, all things considered — the only downside was that tomb sites were usually chosen specifically to avoid groundwater, so this place was far from any water source, and all their drinking water had to be carried back and forth by Chen Dasheng, whose lightness skill was the best among them.
One night, everyone said they wanted something good to eat — really, they just wanted to drink their fill of water. Deep in the night, Chen Dasheng finally returned to the tomb, his back laden with a full water skin.
Everyone cheered from the bottom of their hearts, pulling out little bowls and jars, drinking extravagantly, sighing and praising it as though it were nectar of the gods.
Chen Dasheng smiled sweetly and, like presenting a treasure, tossed a handful of green wild vegetables he’d secretly picked into the pot of goat meat, and everyone cheered again at the fragrance.
Though they were surrounded by heaps of plundered burial treasures, no one spared these things a second glance. Five empty cities had already pushed their need for anything beyond the essentials to a far deeper level.
As the meat bubbled in the pot, fragrant with wild greens, Yu Qingguan sighed. “Ah, today really is a day fit for immortals. Boss, what do you think they’re all doing back home right now?”
Chen Dasheng thought about it seriously, then smiled. “What else could they be doing — eating, drinking, living steady, peaceful, lively days, that’s what.”
“Brother, when do you think we’ll be able to go home?”
“Soon!”