Li Jun clenched his teeth. Sweat dripped down from his brow and trickled past his eyes. He wrapped his hands around the hilt of his sword so tightly that his fingers looked as if they were sculpted from chalk.
A faint glow ran along the length of the dark, shimmering blade, buzzing and flickering above the frozen, snow-covered earth. As he looked up at his sword, he fell into a daze, thinking about what it took to reach this stage.
The frost had fallen. Five months had passed since the rebellion in Spirit City, and its residents prepared to enter the new year with another quarterly festival. Unlike the summer festival, which ended in disaster, Shen Tai had made all the preparations himself, or at least hired a group to make preparations for him, to help the people forget what had happened.
