Chapter 1: The Torn Scroll on a Rainy Night

The rain fell over Chengdu for seven days. The Jin River swelled past its stone railings, leaving only half a doorway visible above the floodwaters in the low-lying houses of the south. At the dawn of the eighth day, an unsigned urgent letter was pressed under the threshold of Ye Guanlan’s residence. A smear of mud clung to the corner of the note, and mixed within that dirt were fine shards of iron.

Ye Guanlan lived in a leaky old workshop outside Qingyang Palace, where he repaired calligraphy, swords, copper seals, and found a bowl of warm porridge for those who had lost their homes. There was no sign out front, just a cracked worktable that concealed several letters he could not hand over to the courier service. As he opened the new missive, he first caught the scent of pine soot ink, followed by a lingering, unscrubbed hint of blood.

The letter contained only two lines: “Fix the old sword before nightfall. There is something hidden inside; do not surrender it to the authorities. If they ask for its source, tell them it came from Jiang Wanzhou. A moment of delay means more than one death.”

Ye Guanlan flipped the paper over. There was no signature on the back, but half a Bamboo Pattern Seal was pressed into the lower right corner. He recognized that mark. Three years prior, during a missing-persons case in Mianyang, he had seen the same bamboo motif. The owner of that seal never showed their face, relying only on black-clad messengers to pass word. That night, Ye Guanlan had delivered a letter to the wrong place, a mistake that led to the death of someone who was never meant to die.

He tossed the letter into the charcoal brazier. The flames licked over the ink, revealing small characters written in faint alum solution: “West Gate, rain gear, white rope.” Ye Guanlan’s brow twitched slightly. He retrieved his old straw raincoat and headed toward the stone walls of the west gate. The standing water outside the gate reached a horse’s belly. In the sheets of rain stood a narrow cart without an Escort Flag, a white rope tied beneath its shaft.

Jiang Wanzhou waited beside the cart, holding an umbrella. At twenty-eight, the rain had sharpened the lines of his face. He was not accompanied by any escorts, and there were no living souls inside the carriage. When Jiang Wanzhou spotted Ye Guanlan, he first cupped his hands in salute, then pressed his hand to the short blade at his waist: “My master died three days ago; his body is already sealed in the coffin. The killer left me with this sword, but demanded that I find you to repair it.”

Ye Guanlan did not answer; he simply looked at the carriage. “If you trusted me, you wouldn’t have brought a knife. If you didn’t trust me, you wouldn’t have delivered the sword to this spot. Young Master Jiang, which of those two things is true?”

Jiang Wanzhou pulled back the carriage curtain and produced a cloth bundle wrapped in oilskin. The outer layer was stitched with an Escort Agency’s cipher, revealing a three-foot-old sword within. The scabbard was jet black, the bronze throat cracked, and the blade, even while sheathed, radiated a cold, rigid aura. Near the opening of the scabbard sat a dark brown stain that no amount of rainwater could wash away.

“I trust your hands, not your reputation,” Jiang Wanzhou said. “Few people in Chengdu can repair swords cast in this old method. If there really are clues in that blade, I need to know why my master died.”

Ye Guanlan took the sword, pressing his thumb gently against the hilt guard. A faint, hollow echo came from inside the scabbard. He did not draw the blade immediately. Instead, he fetched a chip of willow wood, some thin hemp thread, and an oil lamp, placing the sword flat on the workbench. The rain wind blew the flame askew, so Ye Guanlan used his body to shield the light.

“Inspect the rust before the blood; listen to the sword before you disassemble it,” Ye Guanlan said. “Old blades fear haste. Grind an inch too far, and whatever is hidden inside will be severed forever into the iron.”

Jiang Wanzhou watched his hands. “You are repairing a sword, but you look like a coroner. My master said before he died that the killer left no wounds, only this sword stained with blood.”

“Blood can be washed; casting marks cannot.” Ye Guanlan ran a damp cloth over the spine of the blade. “This is not a murder weapon. Someone made it look like one. The blood is only on the surface of the blade; the spine has no soaked-in stains.”

He traced three offset hammer marks along the spine. The first slanted left, the second slanted right, and the third pressed down over the ends of the previous two. Ye Guanlan took out a fine needle and picked a flake of black, glossy lacquer from the third mark. The flake fell into the lamp dish and carried a faint streak of blue.

“Sealing lacquer,” Ye Guanlan said. “Not the tung oil putty used by common swordsmen. Someone split the spine of this sword and sealed it back up with an old technique. The craftsmanship is high, but they have never seen the true parent pattern of the Sword Forging Manor.”

Jiang Wanzhou’s face darkened. “The Sword Forging Manor burned down twenty years ago. Only rumors remain. Where did you see that parent pattern? Did you also witness that fire?”

“I was not there,” Ye Guanlan replied. “But someone brought a broken sword out of the inferno, and that fragment later ended up in Chengdu. I sharpened its edge, so I remember it.”

Suddenly, rapid footsteps sounded outside. A woman in a short blue cloth jacket stepped over the threshold, rain dripping from her hair to the floor. Liu Qingwu was thirty, a lecturer in classics at the local Academy, yet she was clutching a stack of water-damaged files. She placed the documents on the bench, her gaze falling first on the sword, then on Jiang Wanzhou’s face.

“Young Master Jiang,” Liu Qingwu said, “the yamen has sealed your master’s case file, citing the Escort Agency’s private hoarding of forbidden items. I found a contradictory record in the old archives: twenty years ago, before the Sword Forging Manor fire, a batch of Remnant Scrolls was delivered to Chengdu.”

Jiang Wanzhou gripped his knife hilt. “Who collected the Remnant Scrolls? Who issued the seal order? If you only bring half a sentence, I won’t hand my master’s life over to ink on paper.”

“Ink on paper is harder to forge than the confessions of the living.” Liu Qingwu spread out a yellowed page. “This records two post riders who escorted those scrolls. One died en route; the other vanished in Chengdu. The last place the missing man lodged was your Escort Agency’s old residence.”

Ye Guanlan did not look up. He clamped the sword’s spine between two copper plates and tapped it lightly along the hammer marks. The first sound was dull, the second clear, and the third echoed like a hollow jar. Before Jiang Wanzhou could speak, Ye Guanlan had secured the blade in a wooden trough and pulled out a thin chisel.

“If I strike this cut and the sword cracks, the Remnant Scroll is destroyed; if I don’t strike, and the officials arrive, no one will be able to take it with them,” Ye Guanlan said. “I need a steady lamp, a basin of cold water, and your acknowledgment that after today, this sword might never be drawn from its scabbard again.”

Liu Qingwu immediately moved the oil lamp to a sheltered spot. “The cold water is in the rear courtyard. If the sword cannot be drawn, let it remain sheathed. If the truth is only hidden inside an intact sword, it was never worthy of being seen anyway.”

Jiang Wanzhou pressed his hand to the hilt. “Do it. If you destroy the sword, I’ll take the blame. If you intentionally ruin it, I’ll come for your hands first.”

Ye Guanlan brought the chisel down. The first strike chipped away the surface lacquer; the second peeled back a thin line of grey metal; the third caused the spine to spring open a fraction. A scroll of paper, thin as a cicada’s wing and black in color, slid out of the interlayer, its edges stained deep brown. The paper unrolled to just two palms wide. The characters were blurred by water vapor, but several cinnabar seals remained.

“It’s not paper,” Ye Guanlan said. “It’s a fireproof scroll made of mulberry bark and iron powder. The Sword Forging Manor used them to record furnace numbers, hammer counts, and delivery personnel. Ordinary fire cannot burn through it, but water will eventually make it disintegrate. You haven’t brought a relic; you’ve brought a piece of evidence that is currently dying.”

Liu Qingwu leaned in to decipher the text. “Here are the characters ‘Gengwu.’ Next to it is what looks like half a ‘Gu’ character. There’s also a knife mark; someone deliberately carved away the name.”

Ye Guanlan’s hand stopped at the edge of the scroll. He used a needle to pry open a corner that was stuck with dried blood. A series of tiny raised type impressions appeared on the inner layer. Not handwritten, but square in shape, and arranged in reverse order. Liu Qingwu studied it for a moment, then brought a bronze mirror, holding the Remnant Scroll close to the light.

“Read it backwards,” she said. “It’s not a casting record; it’s a handover list. Every fourth character is a new line, and you take the left radical of the final character. Ye Guanlan, look here: ‘Shadow, lamp, rain, well.’ It looks like Ciphers for messengers.”

Ye Guanlan rearranged the four lines of damaged text, his fingernail pausing next to the character for rain. “Two characters are missing after the Ciphers. The gap wasn’t burned away; it was scraped off with a knife. The scrape marks go inward, meaning whoever did this was standing at a table, not rescuing things from a fire.”

The sound of rain outside suddenly grew heavier. A group of officials waded through the water, the leader shouting through the door: “Anyone inside listen up! The yamen is ordered to inspect forbidden items. The Remnant Scrolls from the Sword Forging Manor involve murder and private weapons. Open the door immediately. No hiding, no destroying evidence!”

Jiang Wanzhou drew his short blade an inch. “They are coming too fast. You just said ink on paper is hard to change, but I know better than you whether the yamen’s confessions can be bought.”

Liu Qingwu tucked away the Remnant Scroll. “We can’t force our way out. In Chengdu, both the Escort Agency and the yamen have eyes everywhere. Killing a single official would turn my master’s case into a brawl between the jianghu and the government.”

Ye Guanlan folded the Remnant Scroll back into the interlayer of the spine, clipped it shut with the cracked sword body, and stuffed a piece of scrap iron into the scabbard. He looked up at Jiang Wanzhou. “I take the sword. You stay, to prove the officials took it away. Mr. Liu, take the real Remnant Scroll to the Academy. Do not go through the postal station.”

Jiang Wanzhou gritted his teeth. “Who gave you the right to decide for me? I’ve chased my master’s killer for three years, not to watch another person block the road for me.”

“Because they want the sword, not you,” Ye Guanlan said. “If you stay, you keep your identity. What I take with me is a story that hasn’t been finished. If I die in an alley, you’ll learn that the killer is afraid of more than just the Escort Agency.”

The door was banged hard. The lead official shouted again: “Ye Guanlan, open the door and submit to inspection. Someone has identified you as taking forbidden items. If you hesitate any longer, we will treat it as resisting arrest.”

Hearing his own name, the last bit of warmth in Ye Guanlan’s eyes sank away. Three years ago, that misdelivered letter had turned him from a witness into a suspect; now that old debt was being dredged up again, the timing picked to the very second. He wrapped the sword in old cloth and pushed open the rear window.

Yan Guihong was crouching under the eaves, dressed in tight black clothing, holding a soaked cable. He was a messenger from the Canal Transport Wharf, twenty-five years old, with an old scar on his shoulder but an eyes sharper than the rainy night.

“Men from the Xuanming Society have sealed the main street. The officials are just the blade they show to the world,” Yan Guihong said. “If you take the west alley, you’ll run into three of them; if you go over the rooftops, there are crossbowmen under the tiles. The water channels lead to the Old City, and for only half a shichen, they haven’t flooded yet.”

Ye Guanlan handed the sword to him for a split second, then pulled it back. “Why are you helping me? Messages from the Wharf never risk themselves for priceless things.”

“This sword killed my entire family, but it didn’t kill the one who truly deserved to die,” Yan Guihong said. “I’ve been chasing it for seven years. If it falls into the yamen’s hands today, I won’t even be able to touch the shadow of my enemy.”

Jiang Wanzhou retreated from the front door to the rear window. “Yan Guihong, you have old grudges with the Xuanming Society. Don’t use us as your knives. If you lead us on the wrong path even once, I’ll cut your cable first.”

“The longer you argue, the more the rain washes away their tracks,” Yan Guihong said coldly. “If you want to live, go into the water. If you want to investigate, take me with you. Don’t treat me as a friend; I haven’t treated you as one.”

Ye Guanlan leaped into the water channel, and Jiang Wanzhou followed close behind. Liu Qingwu hid a rubbing of the Remnant Scroll in her book bag and turned to face the officials crashing through the door. She did not try to shield the others; she simply pushed the scrap iron on the workbench under the lamp and said calmly: “The sword is here. The seal lacquer is untouched, and the chisel marks belong to Ye Guanlan. If you want to take us, write down the inspection record clearly first.”

The water alleys of the Old City were so narrow that one could only squeeze through sideways. Ye Guanlan climbed the stone steps forward, rain covering his ankles, the shouts behind them chopped apart by the walls. Yan Guihong cut a horizontal rope in front, and Jiang Wanzhou steadied Ye Guanlan as he slipped. When the three turned the corner of an abandoned dye works, a short arrow from the eaves thudded into the wall crack beside Ye Guanlan’s shoulder.

A black silk tag was tied to the fletching. There were no words, only the Bamboo Pattern Seal.

Ye Guanlan pulled the arrow out and noticed a tiny copper tube embedded in the head. He pried it open with the tip of his blade, revealing a fresh scrap of paper inside. The ink was still wet, containing just one sentence: “The scroll inside the sword must not be handed to the Xuanming Society. If you see the last line, you will understand who collected the bodies for the Ye family twenty years ago.”

He passed the paper to Jiang Wanzhou and re-examined the spine of the sword. The mulberry-bark Remnant Scroll inside the seam was finally forcing out its last layer of text due to the rain vapor. Liu Qingwu’s reverse-reading method was not wrong; the two missing characters were not scraped away, but hidden in the fold at the end. Ye Guanlan slowly smoothed the paper corner with his fingernail. Under the old cinnabar seal, a line of tiny characters finally revealed itself.

The Ye family had not died out completely.