Shangshu, in Yan, is a place where towns are scattered between mountain peaks. Even visiting the next town over means riding a cable car or a cliffside plank road. But thanks to that rugged terrain, every peak carries a legend of its own.

The story opens with a snippet of conversation between a father and daughter at some inn. "Dad, why is the rack under the blade empty?" "It's kept for someone." "Who?" "Someone I had a falling out with." Why they fell out, you'll only find out at the very end.

Lee, a private detective in Lungmen, boards a boat bound for Shangshu because of a favor asked by Yang Xian, a schoolmate he hasn't spoken to in over ten years. The errand is simple: deliver one antique black wine cup.

The problem is, several people are already eyeing this cup. And the moment he steps off the dock, he runs straight into Rhodes Island's Kroos and Mr. Nothing by pure coincidence. As Mr. Nothing puts it, at this point it's not coincidence, it's a script.

1. Welcomed as the First Guest, Treated as the Prime Suspect

Lee arrives at Shangshu's famous Xingyun Inn together with Old Boatman Xin, who came out to meet him. The owner, Boss Zheng, looks like a warmhearted old man devoted to his business, but the calluses on his hands are anything but ordinary.

The waiter, Mr. Liu, gets smacked on the back by the boss again today for grumbling about sales. On the surface, this inn is just another popular eatery, but somehow the glares from the guests on the second floor feel far from ordinary.

By coincidence, Kroos and Mr. Nothing also happen to take a table at the same inn, on the same day. Mr. Nothing, still an operator-in-training who hasn't officially joined yet, is a jack-of-all-trades who settles close combat with nothing but a fan.

Right on cue, Miss Du barges in and grabs Mr. Nothing by the collar. "You're the thief who took the antique box from Lungmen!" She's got completely the wrong man, but her conviction is one hundred percent real.

The brawl only stops once every table and chair in the place is broken. Boss Zheng steps in and barely manages to pull them apart, and only then does everyone finally exchange names. To everyone's surprise, Lee and Kroos already know each other.

Miss Du stamps her foot, unable to swallow her anger, but after a few glances at Boss Zheng, she finally pulls her men back and retreats. "Mr. Nothing, I'll remember you." A first meeting that's already left quite an impression.

2. The Errand His Schoolmate Asked For Was Actually Two Errands

Lee arrives at the local government office and meets Yang Xian for the first time in ten years, a curt reunion greeting, followed by some good-natured ribbing over whose drinking tolerance has changed more.

Catching up after so long, the two drift into stories from their school days. Back then, Yang Xian had loudly declared he'd "light a fire for everyone in the world," and Lee had had his own ambitions too. Now, both of them have become somewhat different people from who they were then.

Mid-conversation, a woman named Miss Ying suddenly shows up. Yang Xian is caught off guard for a moment but plays it cool, and Lee tactfully steps out, sensing something isn't quite right.

It's only after a drink or two that Yang Xian finally gets to the real reason he called Lee here. "Find the owner of the wine cup." The trouble is, he doesn't know their age, sex, or race. The one thing he's sure of is that they're somewhere in the mountains around Shangshu.

Lee grumbles but takes the job anyway. I used to be nothing more than a carp. Borrowing a bit of liquid courage, he lets slip a story from the days when leaping just briefly out of the water made him think the whole world was his.

That night, a teapot with legs shows up outside Lee's room. He shrugs it off, figuring Shangshu must just have a fondness for unusual pets.

3. The Stranger With a Fan, and an Official Throwing His Weight Around

Meanwhile, Kroos and Mr. Nothing go out for an evening stroll and run into a suspicious woman commanding a Slumberfoot. Then the burly official chasing her, Taihe, promptly mistakes them for Infected and comes at them without a word of explanation.

Zuo Le calmly reveals who he is: an envoy of the Sasedae, a secret court agency. And he lets slip something else, too, that Nian and Dusk are beings called "Sui," currently hiding somewhere in Shangshu.

What's more, all of this is apparently tangled up with something that happened at Mount Huiji just days earlier. Kroos ends up becoming, almost by accident, the shield standing between Nian and whatever's chasing her.

Young as he is, Zuo Le is the youngest envoy the Sasedae has ever had. Behind his courteous manner, it's clear every card in the negotiation has already been calculated. Kroos quickly realizes this boy is no naive young lord.

At the same moment, in the courtyard of the government office, a woman named Miss Ying is quietly poking around the study, unbeknownst to Lee and Yang Xian. "This book wasn't here before." Without anyone noticing, she quietly takes note of a certain box.

I believe in Rhodes Island~ That's the only reason I believe in that person too~

— Kroos

4. A Detective Invited Into a Hundred-Year-Old Dream

Yang Xian recalls that as a child, during a Catastrophe that struck the mountains, he once saw a woman collapsed drunk in a pavilion. He only now realizes that the wine cup she'd been holding was the very same black wine cup Lee just delivered.

That night, after drinking with Yang Xian, Lee has a truly strange dream, playing a game of Go with someone in a snow-covered pavilion. His opponent introduces herself as "Ling" and tells him this is "a dream from a hundred years ago."

What's even more unsettling is that his opponent calls him "the one sitting in for him." What I saw in the dream was me, but it wasn't me who dreamed it. Lee turns this over in his mind for a long, long while.

Once he wakes, Lee acts as if nothing happened, calm as ever. But from that day on, his steps toward the mountain start carrying a little more conviction.

5. The Detective Who's Almost Relieved to Be Robbed, and a Ten-Year-Old Grudge

Overnight, the bounty hunter Blacknight breaks in and steals the wine cup. Given that she's from Rim Billiton and keeps a pair of Slumberfoots, she's definitely not a local thief.

But Lee isn't disappointed in the slightest. If anything, he's perfectly content just watching to see how many more anglers show up and what kind of big catch gets hooked.

Meanwhile, Miss Du has been secretly gathering the escort agency's younger men behind her father's back, building up her own separate operation. She wanted the agency to truly become hers, even if that meant sabotaging her father's big deal to do it.

But one remark from Shang Chong, a porter she meets in the mountains, turns everything upside down. Among the people who died in a raid during a downpour ten years ago, apparently, were Shang Chong's son, and Miss Du's real father.

And that the one who abandoned his comrades that day to save only the cargo was none other than Boss Zheng. For the first time, Miss Du realizes just how heavy a debt the seat she's meant to inherit is really standing on.

6. An Absurd Coincidence Brings Everyone to the Same Mountaintop

In the end, Boss Zheng and Shang Chong cross blades atop Cuijiang Peak, at Wangshui Clearing, finally settling a ten-year-old debt. But of all places, this is exactly where Zuo Le and Taihe, who've been chasing the wine cup, and Kroos and Mr. Nothing, trailing right behind them, all converge as well.

Amid the tangle of blade, fan, and club, the wine cup itself ends up rolling right off the cliff. Before anyone even has time to feel deflated, one fact comes to light, late as it is.

This entire mess was Yang Xian's plan all along. If the Sasedae had seized the cup by force, it would have meant a head-on clash with the Ministry of Rites, and Shangshu would have been crushed right in the middle.

So he deliberately let the cup slip out of his own hands. It's also revealed, around this time, that Miss Ying, the guest who kept quietly visiting his residence, was actually a Vice Minister of the Ministry of Rites. It turns out there was a good reason Yang Xian had been so tight-lipped about her.

Caught between the friction of two court agencies, the Sasedae and the Ministry of Rites, a small city like Shangshu ended up placed entirely on the scales. And to keep those scales from tipping, Yang Xian chose to shoot himself in the foot with his own hand.

The first thing I ever learned in the Yan court was, 'the mandate of heaven rests with the people.'

— Yang Xian

7. Big Sister, Little Sister, and the Real Mastermind Hiding in the Mountains

Amid the chaos, Nian and Dusk make their appearance. They're old acquaintances of Kroos, and a thorn in the Sasedae's side. Zuo Le and Nian trade barbed words, each sizing up whether their interests might actually align.

Meanwhile, Taihe and Mr. Nothing get into a proper duel of their own. Watching Mr. Nothing weather thirty-three strikes in a row, Zuo Le lets slip, almost unconsciously, "the Lian family's Yinqing Fan." Only after truly clashing with him does Taihe start to see this young man with the fan in a new light.

Boss Zheng and Shang Chong's duel keeps going too. When falling rocks threaten Miss Du, it's her instead of Boss Zheng who gets hurt trying to save her, and Shang Chong ends up saving them both at the last second. Old enemy or not, he can't stand watching a child get hurt.

Amid the chaos on the mountaintop, Nian, Dusk, and Kroos's group set off together to find the "big sister" said to be somewhere up there.

Ling, whom they finally meet, is Nian and Dusk's elder sister. Laid-back and half-drunk one moment, she reads the situation faster than anyone the moment it truly matters.

And the three of them find out together: sealed inside the black wine cup is a fragment of consciousness belonging to yet another sibling, missing since long ago, a sinner who, obsessed with Go, split himself into 181 black stones.

This entire commotion turns out to have been that sinner's little game, played out of sheer boredom, going so far as to drag Lee into the board, just to find someone to sit in his place.

Zuo Le keeps pressing the matter, invoking his duty to the Sasedae, but Nian brushes it off with a sly retort. "Aren't our interests already aligned?" A negotiation that isn't quite a negotiation drags on, taut as a bowstring.

8. A Towering Shadow, and the Answer That Erased It

The shadows of the three sisters merge into the towering form of a Sui. If it opens its eyes, they might all vanish. Nian is afraid, and Dusk is trembling.

Still, Nian doesn't back down. I simply can't accept this. Don't ask her why, that's just how it is. Dusk doesn't say anything either, but somehow, she seems to be hoping for it a little too.

But Ling calmly pours a cup of wine and holds it out toward the shadow. That thing, she says, is nothing but an illusion reflected in the mind, no need to be jerked around by a shape with no substance.

The world's already been drunk for ten thousand years, can't I dream even once? ...Doesn't matter either way.

— Ling

The towering shadow vanishes without a trace on a single gust of wind. The answer, as always, was simple. Who am I?, whoever answered that question first was always going to win this game.

Epilogue — Shangshu in Spring, Afterward

With a single appearance, the Grand Tutor unravels the whole tangled mess. In exchange for turning a blind eye to the Sasedae's overreach, Yang Xian is promoted and transferred to the capital. Miss Ying departs ahead of everyone else for her next posting, Yumen.

Under Yan's sky, the only thing I fear is the people living without ease and the nation failing to grow strong and prosperous.

— Grand Tutor

Nian is entrusted with a massive wall project to defend the north. Ling decides to keep chasing the whereabouts of the sibling who went missing a hundred years ago.

There's one thing Ling has always wondered. Centuries ago, how on earth did the Grand Tutor beat that Go-obsessed sinner?

The answer turns out to be surprisingly anticlimactic. He simply played the match with all of Yan itself as the board, and every one of its people as the stones.

Operator Leizi, arriving late, mediates between the Sasedae and Rhodes Island, and the whole affair is finally wrapped up. Zuo Le gets an earful from Taihe, while Kroos and Mr. Nothing sigh over news of yet another headache from the agency.

Boss Zheng and Shang Chong, in the end, never cut each other down. It isn't reconciliation. They simply decide to carry their own debts in their own way.

And Miss Du decides to leave her father's side and head somewhere new: Yumen. The sheltered young lady who's only ever lived in a greenhouse is gone for good.

Lee still doesn't head back to Lungmen, choosing instead to chase down the whereabouts of an old friend, Waai Tin Fooi.

Kroos suddenly asks, Lee had said Yang Xian resembled Lungmen's Wei Yanwu, so what exactly was similar about them? Lee's answer is short.

Both of them, in front of the person they carry in their heart, can't move an inch.

— Lee

Oh, and it comes out belatedly that Blacknight was actually someone Miss Ying had secretly sent. "I just didn't want him getting tangled up in something complicated without even knowing it," Miss Ying says with a smile, waving off any further questions.

Remember that empty sword rack at the inn, back at the very start of the story? It was a spot kept open for someone he'd had a falling-out with.

Shang Chong still leaves Shangshu, but Boss Zheng tells him, "I'll be waiting for you here in Shangshu." That empty rack, maybe, someday, it'll finally be filled.