Captain Shao Lian, a battle-hardened veteran of the Ming Dynasty's imperial army, had become a respected officer in the emperor's elite bodyguards.This notorious and politically-powerful secret service organization, known as the Jinyiwei (imperial brocade guards), also functioned as the emperor's premiere intelligence agency and extension of his iron fist. They were the empire's bladesmen. After Shao Lian was assigned to eliminate a ruthless crime lord after he had seized power over several frontier towns, he discovers that the Blood Foot Syndicate had awakened a powerful and terrifying adversary from a bygone era. Shao Lian and the soldiers in his command suddenly find themselves waging a harrowing war of survival against allied criminal gangs and an ancient being who commands hordes of monstrous man-eaters. With the aid of a Venetian scholar named Lilianna, they discover the secrets of prehistory and unravel a conspiracy that set ancient mechanisms into motion that now threaten the Ming Empire and the rest of the 15th century world.