Before the Tianling Massacre
The man who in truth controls the Lord of Mirage, and the last closed-door disciple of Yun Zhongzi, the finest swordsman in the world. He claims to be the descendant of a noble house long fallen.
His name had already become a thing of the past; his surname, it is said, came from a family of high nobility.
His family came out on the losing side in the struggle over imperial power, and from then on no path to office lay open to him — neither as a scholar nor as an official. When he came of age, his aging father gave him a treasure beyond price, the Golden Sword, and soon afterwards breathed his last.
That Golden Sword has a long, broad blade, and was forged by his ancestors as a weapon of the gods. It is said to carry enormous power within it, and to be capable, matched to the inner force of the one who wields it, of breaking out in a devastating lethality.
What the young Golden Swordsman wanted then was to become the strongest man in the Wulin, and so he took service under its most celebrated name — Yun Zhongzi, the finest swordsman in the world.
His insight was extraordinary and his swordwork advanced at a startling pace, but he was a man of schemes, and he kept his own skill hidden away, becoming a disciple whom nobody noticed.
At last, in a duel of the highest order, Yun Zhongzi was beaten by Tie Junzi and gravely wounded.
The title of finest swordsman in the world changed hands. Sick at heart, Yun Zhongzi buried his famous sword and his sword manual behind the Hall of Rites and Swords, gave himself over to healing his wounds, and was seen in public no more.
A lion that has fallen has no claws left and no name left. Yun Zhongzi was not dead, but his legacy had not yet been passed to any of his disciples.
The Golden Swordsman would wait no longer. While Yun Zhongzi still lay gravely wounded, he came on the pretext of visiting the sick and stabbed him to death on his sickbed, then butchered Yun Zhongzi’s whole household, sparing not even a servant’s small son. He dug up the famous sword and the sword manual, and vanished without a trace.
He hid himself in a secret place and trained bitterly for several years, until at last he had mastered Yun Zhongzi’s sword art. But the name of a great swordsman held little interest for him, and he took no part in the Wulin’s quarrelling over reputations.
It was by chance, rather, that the Golden Swordsman came to know Xuanji, another recluse of the Wulin. After a few meetings the two found kindred spirits in each other, and he praised Xuanji’s idea of a “New World” to the skies. Together the two of them laid the plot at Tianling Peak.
But when he saw how savagely the gathered masters cut one another down, and felt his own helplessness as the situation slid beyond control, the Golden Swordsman came to feel the terror of the Heavenly Tome and of the “New World” — and a hunger for control such as he had never known. In the flash of a spark he drew his sword and ran Xuanji through. But Xuanji’s dying blow struck him blind.
Blind, the Golden Swordsman had no road left to turn back on. He resolved to walk on along the plan he and Xuanji had made, only with a few variables of his own added, so as to hold the whole situation firmly in his own hands…
After the Tianling Massacre
After years of study and contemplation, no one could say what height his swordsmanship had reached. To train with better effect he had lived for years in a room that can suppress Sha-Chi; even inside it, they say, he can still bring out formidable swordwork. And the moment that suppression is lifted, he will show a strength ten times — even a hundred times — more terrible than his master’s.
In the conspiracy as first drawn up, Xuanji had built not only the Sha-Chi generation device but a Sha-Chi suppression device as well, to counter the state that came when Sha-Chi ran out of control. Beyond Xuanji himself, only the Golden Swordsman knew that the suppression device existed; and with Xuanji dead, the Golden Swordsman became the only man who held it. In his eyes this was the card that made him fit to rule the Council of Eleven, and one day the whole Wulin besides.
The Sha-Chi suppression device can nullify all Sha-Chi within a given area. For a martial artist that is no less than having his martial arts destroyed; for the others of the Council of Eleven, who had been through Transcension, it shuts down their Sha-Chi generation devices altogether. That is why, even after he had rallied the Council of Eleven, the Golden Swordsman still kept the suppression device hidden. In secret he built a larger-scale suppression device, and remade “Duo” — the one among the Council of Eleven who had no will of her own — planting the switch of the suppression device inside her body.
When the great war with The Order began, the Golden Swordsman’s plan unfolded with it: let the rest of the Council of Eleven and The Order fight until both sides were ruined, then use the Sha-Chi suppression device to clear up what was left, and in the end gather everything into his own hands — The Order’s manpower and resources, the Council of Eleven’s research on the Remnant Volume of the Heavenly Tome, and the Xuan family’s research on it as well — and so become the strongest man in history to hold the Wulin under his heel.
Unfortunately he had underestimated not only the strength of The Order but the strength of the orphan of the Xuan family whom he had raised with his own hands: Xuanyu. Men who set out to dominate the Wulin rarely come to a good end.