Chapter Summaries

Shen Tang investigated a hidden group in a barren valley and learned they were starving Ten Crows refugees, not an ambush. She considered whether their hatred of the tribes could make them allies in her campaign.

• Gu Chi and Jiang Sheng advised Shen Tang that detouring around the valley would risk discovery and cost time, so she ordered scouts to learn more.
• Xu Quan captured a merchant scouting for the valley refugees, and Gu Chi interrogated him with his Literary Scholar ability.
• The merchant revealed that he had been trapped in the valley for over a month after refugees robbed him of his smuggled salt.
• The merchant said more than a thousand refugees were starving in the valley, with only a little over a hundred able-bodied fighters.
• Shen Tang asked whether the refugees hated the Ten Crows tribes enough to fight them as pawns, even at the cost of their lives.

Shen Tang sent Xu Quan with two hundred elite soldiers and Jiang Sheng to negotiate with refugees occupying a valley, but Xu Quan quickly captured them instead. After securing the survivors, Xu Quan discovered a young slave with rare purple hair among them.

• A salt merchant told Shen Tang that the people of Ten Crows followed whoever provided for them, and Shen Tang warned him to keep their identities secret.
• Shen Tang assigned Xu Quan to handle the refugees and sent Jiang Sheng along, while Xu Quan took two hundred elite soldiers and the salt merchant to the valley.
• Xu Quan destroyed the refugees’ watchtower, stormed their stronghold, and captured the able-bodied adults in less than a quarter of an hour.
• Xu Quan ordered the remaining refugees guarded and promised they would live and receive food if they cooperated.
• The salt merchant pulled a young slave from the crowd, and Xu Quan ordered the cloth covering his head removed to reveal his shimmering purple braid.

Xu Quan brought a mysterious purple-haired slave back from Ten Crows, but Jiang Sheng and Gu Chi could not determine why he was cut off from Heaven and Earth Qi. They decided to keep him under watch as Shen Tang recruited Ten Crows refugees to attack nearby tribes.

• Xu Quan questioned the purple-haired slave and learned his hair was dyed, then took him along to find out how it was done.
• Jiang Sheng suspected something was unusual about the slave, and Gu Chi found that neither his passive nor active Word Spirit could read him.
• Jiang Sheng ordered the slave kept under constant watch and assigned Lingde to monitor him.
• Shen Tang offered food and military funds to Ten Crows refugee leaders, who agreed to help attack the nearby tribes.

Shen Tang planned to use the Ten Crows refugees to stir up trouble, while Steward Lin took charge of a mysterious slave boy Gu Chi had sent her. The boy, renamed Sparrow Head, settled into camp and praised Shen Tang, but Steward Lin soon called him away.

• Shen Tang told Steward Lin that the army would feed the refugees with grain taken from their next target, rather than spend its own supplies.
• Gu Chi's guard delivered a slave boy to Steward Lin and explained that Xu Quan wanted her to learn how his hair had been dyed.
• Steward Lin named the boy Sparrow Head, assigned him work, and learned that he came from a wealthy family whose members had been punished for a crime.
• Sparrow Head worked hard, thanked the soldiers for his safer circumstances, and praised Shen Tang as a rescuer.
• Steward Lin interrupted Sparrow Head's conversation with a soldier and ordered him to follow her.

Lin Feng searched the valley during a night patrol for a boy who matched her teacher’s warning, then discussed the suspicious slave boy with Gu Chi. Gu Chi ordered her to keep him alive and under watch while he reported the matter to their lord.

• Lin Feng took the slave boy on patrol and searched hiding places for someone his age, but found nothing.
• Lin Feng told Gu Chi that the slave boy matched the description from her teacher’s warning.
• Gu Chi advised Lin Feng to keep the boy alive and watch him, noting that Ten Crows’ nobles were usually guarded during their trials.
• Lin Feng warned Gu Chi that the boy had asked about their lord’s identity, and Gu Chi said he would report the concern to their lord.
• Xu Quan offered to use his beauty to deal with the boy, prompting Lin Feng’s silence.

Xu Quan warned Lin Feng that the slave boy might be using a Ten Crows secret art that let his consciousness inhabit another body, and Shen Tang’s forces prepared to exploit the boy’s captivity. After resting, the army launched a surprise attack and gave the slave boy a knife, leaving him to confront the operation’s violence.

• Xu Quan told Lin Feng that the slave boy might be a dead man created by a rare Ten Crows secret art, and warned that killing him could let the true target escape.
• Lin Feng reported Xu Quan’s theory to Shen Tang, who concluded that the slave boy’s living body could be kept imprisoned while her forces pursued their plans.
• Shen Tang reviewed her accounts and considered how to intensify the bloodshed in the Ten Crows royal court to meet her target.
• The army finished resting and launched a surprise attack on its target the following evening.
• Lin Feng gave the slave boy a crude knife and told him it was for killing people.

Shen Tang’s forces captured a Ten Crows granary, and she devised a plan to use the Golden Crow ancestor legend to divide the tribes and turn them against their rulers. Gu Chi and Jiang Sheng understood the plan as the story left them preparing to spread a new interpretation of Ten Crows beliefs.

• The refugees brutally killed the tribespeople guarding the granary, and Lin Feng noticed that the young slave fought with skill and composure.
• Lin Feng assigned the young slave to help collect ears from the dead, while Xu Quan joked about Ten Crows customs and Lin Feng chased him off.
• Shen Tang’s forces brought the captured grain back to the valley, where the refugees rejoiced and thanked their Golden Crow ancestor.
• Shen Tang told Gu Chi that educating the Ten Crows might let them divide the tribes from within, and Jiang Sheng questioned whether the people could be persuaded.
• Shen Tang proposed promoting the Golden Crow as a benevolent ancestor and blaming the Ten Crows’ hardship on rulers who seized the people’s land, giving them grounds to unite against those rulers.

After Shen Tang distributed supplies to the Ten Crows refugees, a strange object fell from the sky during their celebration. It proved to be a stele about the Golden Crow and its descendants, leaving Shen Tang to decide what to do with evidence that could strengthen the Ten Crows' claim to divine ancestry.

• Shen Tang gave the Ten Crows refugees food and winter supplies and held a victory celebration, while she and Sparrow Head stayed apart from the revelry.
• Lin Feng sat with Sparrow Head, who said he disliked killing as they watched the celebration.
• A black, three-legged crow-like beast trailing a red halo fell from the sky and vanished into the mountains, drawing the camp into an uproar.
• Shen Tang and her officers found a stone stele inscribed in Ten Crows characters and sealed off the area.
• Xianyu Jian warned Shen Tang that the stele described the Golden Crow and its family precepts, and urged her to destroy it before it could validate the Ten Crows' ancestry.
• Shen Tang refused to destroy the stele before learning what it said, fearing that destroying a divine gift might offend the heavens.

Shen Tang and her advisors staged a heavenly stele inscribed with Ten Crows ancestral lore to manipulate the refugees’ beliefs. The stele’s discovery began spreading among the Ten Crows, while Shen Tang and Gu Chi planned to amplify the story.

• Shen Tang had Gu Chi and Jiang Sheng inspect the stele, and they decided to copy it and guard the original rather than destroy it.
• Lin Feng asked Sparrow Head to read a copy, warning him not to remember its contents, while he secretly hoped the stele would prove the Ten Crows’ ancestry.
• Sparrow Head helped spread rumors about the stele, and the story reached nearly all the refugees by the next day.
• Shen Tang questioned why the refugees believed the stele had fallen from heaven, and Gu Chi explained how strongly they wanted proof of their lineage.
• Gu Chi revealed that he had selected gossipy refugees to learn the inscription and spread the story further.

Shen Tang and her advisers discussed how to divide the Ten Crows by exploiting their Golden Crow ancestry, while the refugees embraced a stele declaring them equal descendants with rights to their ancestral land. Gu Chi helped spread the inscription’s message, and the chapter ended with unrest beginning to take root among the Ten Crows.

• Jiang Sheng proposed dividing the Ten Crows into competing lineages descended from different Golden Crows, but Gu Chi said they should wait until the first stele inscription had spread further.
• The refugees learned the stele’s claims that all Ten Crows descendants were equal, entitled to their land and inheritance, and wronged by traitors who had betrayed their ancestors’ will.
• The refugees connected the inscription to their own oppression, grieving over lost families, stolen land, slavery, and the powerful tribes that controlled their resources.
• Shen Tang suspected Gu Chi had shaped the refugees’ reaction, and Gu Chi admitted he had explained the inscription to influential people so its ideas would spread.
• Shen Tang concluded that unrest was beginning to grow among the Ten Crows and that they would deal with the conflict step by step.

Shen Tang agreed to give the refugees the stone stele in exchange for their help recruiting more people and spreading its revelation. Meanwhile, Gu Chi continued searching for Sparrow Head’s real body, and Lin Feng offered to test an untried Word Spirit.

• A refugee headman offered Shen Tang his loyalty and contacts in exchange for the stone stele, and Shen Tang agreed on the condition that the refugees help recruit people.
• The refugee headman persuaded his followers to contact their scattered relatives, gather more refugees, and build their strength while spreading the revelation about Ten Crows’ traitors.
• Gu Chi explained to Lin Feng that Sparrow Head underestimated the refugees and had not realized his identity was exposed.
• Lin Feng pressed Gu Chi to find Sparrow Head’s real body, and Gu Chi revealed an untested searching Word Spirit that might work on him.
• Lin Feng volunteered to try the Word Spirit, and Gu Chi sarcastically wished her literary fortunes well.

Slaves in Ten Crows fled toward Shen Tang’s refugee “tribe” after recruiters won them over with food, warm clothes, and the Ancestor Stone Tablet’s message. After discovering a royal order to attack Yonggu Pass, Shen Tang considered Gu Chi’s proposal to strike at the Ten Crows capital instead.

• A former tribesman led more than a dozen slaves out of Ten Crows territory, giving them hidden winter clothes and provisions before continuing toward the refugee “tribe.”
• Recruiters spread the Ancestor Stone Tablet’s message among slaves, and its promise of hope took root among the oppressed and reached ordinary Ten Crows people.
• Xianyu Jian brought Shen Tang a secret military order from the Ten Crows royal court calling up troops to attack Yonggu Pass.
• Gu Chi advised Shen Tang not to return with their small force and proposed striking the Ten Crows capital while its forces were away.

Shen Tang decided to exploit the Ten Crows’ weakened defenses by striking at their tribes and potentially their capital, while Jiang Sheng agreed to help her kill a king. As the army marched out, Lin Feng set off with ten guards to hunt Sparrow Head herself, despite having only a fifty percent chance of finding him.

• Gu Chi proposed that Shen Tang’s roughly two thousand soldiers attack the Ten Crows’ royal capital while its defenses were likely weakened, and Shen Tang ordered the army to rest before moving out.
• Shen Tang told Gu Chi she would target tribes along the route to weaken the Ten Crows and fuel discord among their princes, rather than expose the army with a direct march on the capital.
• Jiang Sheng welcomed the chance to complete his Way of the Scholar by cutting off a king’s head, and Shen Tang promised to give him the opportunity if she could.
• Shen Tang arranged for the refugee headman to claim the grain from another tribe after her army destroyed it, but warned him not to ask for more.
• Lin Feng asked to take ten guards to find and personally kill Sparrow Head, and Shen Tang worried about her safety as the army set out at night.

Lin Feng prepared to lead the vanguard while Sparrow Head plotted to use the stele to secure his claim to the throne. In the Ten Crows capital, Su Shi Yilu’s aide learned that a scholar had left, and the scholar’s Word Spirit pointed him northwest instead of toward Yonggu Pass.

• Shen Tang accepted Lin Feng’s decision to follow her teacher and urged her to return safely.
• Xu Quan told Sparrow Head that the stele had been left in the valley and that Lin Feng had gone to lead the vanguard; Sparrow Head resolved to use the stele to strengthen his claim as heir.
• Su Shi Yilu’s aide found the scholar’s farewell letter and learned that the Ten Crows planned to invade Yonggu Pass under a rival prince’s commander.
• The scholar rode away from the royal capital and used his Word Spirit, which indicated northwest and great fortune rather than the route to Yonggu Pass.

At the Ten Crows royal court, Su Shi Yilu forced the Great King to delay the campaign against Yonggu Pass until the Twelfth Prince could return. The princes continued conspiring against the missing heir, while his enemies claimed they had men waiting along the Path to Take.

• The Great King asked his sons who would lead the campaign against Yonggu Pass, but Su Shi Yilu refused to support it without the Twelfth Prince.
• Su Shi Yilu urged the Great King to summon the Twelfth Prince, arguing that he was the most noble heir and warning against succession struggles.
• The Great King agreed to wait seven days for the Twelfth Prince, then threatened to make him a sinner if his absence delayed the campaign.
• After the court session, Su Shi Yilu mocked the Third Prince and other princes for their internal strife and losses among their tribes.
• Several princes held a private drinking party and revealed that they had not found the Twelfth Prince's corpse, but had sent men along the Path to Take to kill him if he appeared.

Su Shi Yilu and his aide planned to send all eleven princes to the front so none could claim sole credit for taking Yonggu Pass. Meanwhile, Lin Feng led ten guards into a mountain range to hunt their target, where she finally crossed swords with someone in the darkness.

• The princes suspected one another of orchestrating the tribal massacres but concealed their suspicions during the banquet.
• Su Shi Yilu's aide proposed dividing the credit for taking Yonggu Pass among all eleven princes, and Su Shi Yilu approved the plan.
• Lin Feng and her ten guards killed a group of men and continued toward the target's hiding place in a rugged mountain range.
• After a shadow moved near their camp at night, Lin Feng told the guards to stay alert and leaped up a cliff.
• Lin Feng's sword met another blade in the darkness, and two beams of literary energy appeared above them.

Lin Feng confronted a mysterious Literary Scholar who had been watching her group in the Ten Crows’ dangerous forbidden zone. After he claimed to be lost and without provisions, he insisted on joining them, leaving Lin Feng stunned.

• Lin Feng fought the hooded Literary Scholar until he escaped her attack and was surrounded by her ten Martial Gall Warrior guards.
• Lin Feng demanded to know who he was and why he had been watching them, but he claimed he was merely passing through.
• The mysterious Literary Scholar said he had encountered mutilated groups of elite troops and had been hunted while traveling through the area.
• Lin Feng warned him to leave, threatening to treat his presence as a provocation if he stayed.
• The Literary Scholar removed his hood and admitted he was lost and had no provisions, then asked to travel with Lin Feng’s group.
• Lin Feng offered to give him provisions if he stayed away from them, but he refused.

Lin Feng and the mysterious Literary Scholar rested together in the Ten Crows wilderness before a band of armed men attacked them. After defeating the attackers, Lin Feng realized their target was nearby, and her guards found a possible hiding place.

• Lin Feng let the mysterious Literary Scholar join her group after he asked for food, and he shared that he did not know where his rebellious son was.
• Lin Feng and the Literary Scholar sensed an approaching group during the night, and he raised a wall of literary qi to block them.
• Lin Feng ordered her guards to leave one attacker alive, but the Ten Crows Martial Gall Warriors were defeated and the captive killed himself.
• The Literary Scholar identified the dead men as elite soldiers connected to the two groups pursuing him, and Lin Feng deduced that their target was nearby.
• Lin Feng ordered a search of the area, and a guard announced that he had found a hiding place.

Lin Feng pursued the assassins through a hidden cave and followed a literary-energy trail to a cliffside ledge. There, she killed the Ten Crows youth she called “Your Highness,” leaving the mysterious scholar stunned.

• Lin Feng and the mysterious scholar entered the hidden cave and found a warm stone bed and several exits.
• The mysterious scholar used a Word Spirit to trace the assassins’ lingering aura, and Lin Feng led the group after it.
• At the trail’s end, Lin Feng leaped from the cliff and attacked two men on a ledge below.
• The mysterious scholar followed Lin Feng down and saw her pin the sleeping Ten Crows youth to the ground.
• Lin Feng stabbed the youth through the heart and Dantian, taunted him about his kin, and killed him.
• Lin Feng took the youth’s head and asked the mysterious scholar whether he had questions.

Lin Feng killed the Twelfth Prince of the Ten Crows and began returning to camp with his head, while Shen Tang learned of the success and prepared to welcome her. The Great Queen Mother awoke from a nightmare of her son’s death with a powerful sense of foreboding.

• Lin Feng confirmed to the mysterious Literary Scholar that the severed head belonged to the Twelfth Prince and let him take the corpse.
• Lin Feng’s guards helped bring the party back up the cliff, and Lin Feng preserved the prince’s head in a box with salt.
• The mysterious Literary Scholar requested food and water, then rode away across the wilderness.
• Sparrow Head suddenly died in camp, and Xu Quan told Shen Tang that Lin Feng might have killed the Twelfth Prince’s original body.
• Shen Tang planned to send someone to meet Lin Feng and hold her a welcome feast when she returned.
• The Great Queen Mother dreamed that her son was dead and woke before dawn unable to shake her foreboding.