Novel

• 🔹 Aliases: Head of the Underworld, the Shadow of Shuntian
• 🔹 Creed: Money makes you master (the original creed — "Heaven's way is unjust, so we open a way of our own; we do not prey on the good, we do not fear the wicked; we rob the rich to help the poor, and act in Heaven's stead" — has long survived in name only)
• 🔹 Headquarters: The Ruined Temple in South City, Shuntian City (a collapsed temple above ground, three levels below)
• 🔹 Path of Cultivation: Steal, burgle, rob, scam — not to beat anyone, only to get what you came for

📜 Background

Forty years ago, four youths lived in a ruined temple in the South City of Shuntian City. One was an orphan; one was a farmer's son who had lost his land; one was a constable who had escaped from prison; and one was a young woman who had fled a brothel. The four of them had nothing but each other. Before a Buddha statue missing half its face, they swore a blood oath and made a single vow:

"Heaven's way is unjust, so we shall open a way of our own. We do not prey on the good, we do not fear the wicked; we rob the rich to help the poor, and act in Heaven's stead."

In time each of the four walked the jianghu under a name of their own, and each held a path of their own: Shadow ran theft and intelligence, Thousand Faces ran swindles and negotiation, Iron Fist ran robbery and muscle, and Ghost Hand ran planning and operations. Four people, four paths — the root of what would later become the Four Arts: steal, burgle, rob, and scam.

Forty years on, no one mentions that oath anymore. What members say now is something else: "Money makes you master."

Today the Tiandao Alliance counts its members in the tens of thousands, with a branch in every major town. Its trades include smuggling, gambling dens, loan-sharking, pawnshops, escort agencies, taverns, brothels, an underground intelligence network — and the most lucrative and most dangerous of them all: vault robbery. The court knows the Alliance exists, and finds it useful; this is an "officially recognized underworld" that pays regular tribute in exchange for a quiet understanding that it will not be purged.

The four founders are only legend now. Those who sit beneath the ruined temple are their heirs.

🏯 Headquarters

The headquarters lies in the ruined temple of Shuntian City's South City. Above ground it is a collapsed temple no one is willing to enter; the stone lion at its gate is missing half its face, and ordinary people walk the long way around. Below, however, are three levels — the Bright Hall, the Dark Rooms, and the Black Kiln, each with its own purpose: a council hall, a vault, cells, a training ground and target range, an armory, a jobs room, a room for fencing stolen goods, and the "Lock Lane" — lined on both sides with doors, every one of them locked. This is where members practice picking locks. Whatever sits behind each door, the one who opens it will know — and the one who can't open it has no need to know.

📍 Strongholds

Four principal strongholds:

• 🔹 Nine Dragons Casino — Three stories: ordinary gamblers on the first floor, a VIP hall on the second, council business on the third.
• 🔹 Tianji Pavilion — The intelligence center, disguised as a teahouse, with Deaf Granny in charge.
• 🔹 Black Water Pier — The channel for smuggling and moving stolen money.
• 🔹 Hundred Treasures Pawnshop — A nationwide chain, for fencing goods and lending money.

The four do not operate on their own — three secret tunnels run from the Dark Rooms of the headquarters to Black Water Pier, Nine Dragons Casino, and Tianji Pavilion, so neither goods nor people ever need to touch the street.

Beyond these, branches are set up in every major town, each run by a branch master appointed by headquarters, who recruits their own people and looks after their own territory. The Qingzhou branch sits beneath an old temple on the west side of the city that collapsed twenty-seven years ago — "Collapsed suits us fine. When it's collapsed, nobody looks underneath."

🗡️ The Four Arts

The Heavenly Thief's Canon is the master key to the Four Arts, and it is learned first; after that, whichever path you specialize in is bound to one martial art. The Four Arts spring from a single source but walk four different roads. Stealing looks to the hands, burgling to the eyes, robbing to the nerve, scamming to the heart. Clumsy hands can't steal, cloudy eyes can't burgle, the timid can't rob; and anyone whose heart isn't cold enough will feel, whoever they try to con, that they are only conning themselves. Each of the Four Arts has three stages, which advance with mastery of the matching martial art; the stage you have reached decides whom you can lay hands on and what you can walk away with.

👐 Steal — Bound to Snake-Tongue Dagger

• 🔹 Stage One, "In Passing": The blade in your sleeve, you at their side — what you take is loose change.
• 🔹 Stage Two, "Shadowless": The blade moves and no one notices; what was taken, and when, they learn only afterward.
• 🔹 Stage Three, "Empty Hands": Blade edge and fingertip travel the same path — you can take things even mid-fight. Your opponent thinks you are attacking him, when really you are only passing by his waist.

👁️ Burgle — Bound to Goose-Feather Blade

• 🔹 Stage One, "Lookout": You can tell which wall has something behind it, and which window stays unlatched at night.
• 🔹 Stage Two, "Lying Low": You can get in and get back out — no dog barks, no lamp flickers.
• 🔹 Stage Three, "Into the Vault": Trick locks, hidden sentries, the gaps in the changing of the watch — the whole storehouse lies open before your eyes like a map.

💪 Rob — Bound to Mountain-Splitting Axe

• 🔹 Stage One, "Stray Bandit": One axe-blow into the ground, and passersby scatter.
• 🔹 Stage Two, "Mounted Raider": Your axe opens doors, and guards dare not come near.
• 🔹 Stage Three, "Blocking the Road": One man, one axe, planted across the road — a whole escort caravan has to ask his leave first.

🧠 Scam — Bound to Thousand Faces Art

• 🔹 Stage One, "Small Con": In the streets and markets, a change of clothes makes you someone else.
• 🔹 Stage Two, "Setting the Game": Not only a convincing disguise — you let the other person work out for themselves that "he must be who he says he is."
• 🔹 Stage Three, "Pulling Strings": You can walk into government offices and take a seat at banquets; what you are changing is no longer a face, but other people's decisions.

⚔️ Martial Arts of the Tiandao Alliance

The Alliance's martial arts are not divided into stages; you simply train them all the way through. Mastery runs from shallow to deep through ten grades: Novice, Beginner, Minor Success, Practiced, Integrated, Refined, Outstanding, Adept, Grandmaster's Poise, and at the very summit, "Transcendent."

Disciples of other sects break down techniques on the training ground; disciples of the Tiandao Alliance do it on the street. Blade work is practiced at other people's cuffs, eyesight on moonless nights, nerve in the instant the other man's blade clears its sheath — the calluses on your hands are worn in by the blade, and the skill is made by doing.

"You're asking how to train?" Deaf Granny waves her rush fan. "Go out and do it. Pull it off, and you'll have learned it yourself."

The Alliance's arts are not taught to outsiders, and they are not for sale — you join first, and only then can you learn anything.

🗝️ Heavenly Thief's Canon (HeavenlySecret) — The Master Key

Something four youths pieced together in a ruined temple forty years ago: no lineage, no teacher, only what they learned staying alive. It doesn't teach you how to beat anyone; it teaches you how to get what you want without fighting at all.

"Stealing" looks to the hands, "burgling" to the eyes, "robbing" to the nerve, "scamming" to the heart. The Four Arts share one source: apart, each is a path of its own; together, there is no crack they cannot slip through. This canon adds no inner power and no techniques, yet it is the threshold of all Four Arts — without it, stealing, burgling, robbing, and scamming all stay closed to you.

🐍 Snake-Tongue Dagger (SnakeDagger) — Taught by Shen Jiuye · Bound to "Steal"

The signature skill of Chief Helmsman Shen Jiuye. Hidden in the cane that never leaves his hand is a long, slender short blade called "Snake Tongue" — no more than three inches clear of its sheath, and it has already drawn blood. This dagger art does not seek to overpower anyone head-on; it asks for only one thing: closeness. Snake Tongue does not bite at what is far away. Without this blade, whatever your reputation for crime, you will only ever get your hands on the copper scraps of roadside beggars.

• 🔹 Techniques: Snake Flicks Its Tongue · Blade Beneath the Sleeve · Close-Pass Blade · Backhand Flick · One Inch to the Throat · Wrist-Turn Slash
• 🔹 Ultimate Secret — Swap: A blade isn't for hurting people; it's for trading things. Three inches of steel turn once at the wrist, the enemy's weapon is already on the ground, and all that's left in his palm is the chip of wood you slipped him. Draw close with your breath held, take his blade in a single move — that is exactly how this school plays its signature hand.

🗡️ Goose-Feather Blade (GooseBlade) — Taught by Ghost Blade Liu · Bound to "Burgle"

Taught by Ghost Blade Liu, master of the Qingzhou branch. He spent more years as an executioner than he has in the Alliance, and that three-foot goose-feather saber was made for beheadings — light in the body, thin at the edge; one stroke should never need a second sound.

"The blade must be silent, the man must be shapeless. If anyone hears you draw, the whole trip was wasted." In this school a blade is not only a weapon; it is a crowbar, a probe, the thing that cuts through a door bar.

• 🔹 Techniques: Goose-Feather Slant · One Stroke, Two Halves · Silent Fall of the Blade · Three Linked Cuts · Wind-Splitter · Edge to the Throat
• 🔹 Ultimate Secret — Deception: What Ghost Blade Liu keeps at the very bottom of his chest. A true burglar doesn't leave only after winning the fight; nobody even remembers anyone was there. The flash of the blade vanishes, the man sinks into the shadows, and everyone present stares at one another — who was that holding the saber just now? Not one of them can recall. Only — those whose blood you have already drawn will still know you. This is the art of slipping away before the fight begins, not something you reach for once you've lost.

🪓 Mountain-Splitting Axe (MountainAxe) — Taught by Iron Lion · Bound to "Rob"

The masterwork of Grand Protector Iron Lion, inherited from the line of "Iron Fist" among the four founders. A pair of mountain-splitting axes weighing eighty jin; when they swing, the sound of the wind arrives first and the shadow of the axes after. There is nothing clever in this path. Iron Lion puts it bluntly: "Liu Laosan's blade is for jobs that don't want to wake anyone. These two axes of mine are for letting the other side know exactly who's come." Nerve is something you train, but what holds your nerve up is the axe.

• 🔹 Techniques: Mountain-Splitting Strike · Axe Through the Door · Twin Axes Pinch the Mountain · Axe Shadow Overhead · Crosswise Axe Blocks the Road · Armor-Crusher
• 🔹 Ultimate Secret — Betray: The least honorable, yet most practical, move in the Tiandao Alliance's forty years. Alliance rules forbid laying hands on honest folk — but does a thief who has just made a score count as honest folk? Iron Lion's answer: "That bag in his hand wasn't his to begin with." The axe falls especially hard on those who live by robbery, and harder still on anyone who has just made a score and hasn't yet unloaded the goods — and it takes the loot along with it. Once this axe comes down, there is no turning back.

🎭 Thousand Faces Art (ThousandFace) — Taught by Su Xiaotang · Bound to "Scam"

The ancestral art of "Thousand Faces" among the four founders, now passed down to her granddaughter Su Xiaotang. The Thousand Faces Art doesn't alter your bones; it alters "what other people think they saw." The same face — a different gait, a different rhythm to your cough, a different pet phrase — and nine people in ten won't recognize you, while the tenth will wonder whether they remembered wrong. Su Xiaotang once used this art to serve half a year as a sixth-rank official in Shuntian City; by the time it came to light, she was a thousand li away.

• 🔹 This school throws no strikes — its power lies in the game, not in the hands.
• 🔹 Ultimate Secret — Escape: Su Xiaotang says this one isn't a martial art, it's a craft: "Running when you can't win — anyone can do that. The hard part is making them think you haven't run." A scream, a body on the ground, and by the time everyone crowds around, all that's left is a set of clothes and a remarkably lifelike painted mask — she is already in the next alley over.

🍃 Slate Steps (SlateSteps) — The Alliance's Lightness Skill

The first skill everyone in the Alliance has to learn — a thief who can't walk the rooftops will die in an alley sooner or later. Slate Steps isn't about how high you can jump; it's about where you land. Tiles are brittle, ridgelines slope, and at night you can't see which tile is loose — what this art trains is "knowing where to step." The rising prodigy Little Monkey reached "Silent on the Tiles" at sixteen, and Deaf Granny calls him a once-in-a-century talent — the Alliance's old hands just laugh and say people said the very same thing about Granny when she was young.

• 🔹 Footwork: Silent on the Tiles · Shadow over the Ridge · Sidestep Along the Wall · Tuck Beneath the Eaves · Dash Through the Lanes · Three Leaps Across the Roofs

🛡️ Hunyuan Iron Cloth (HunyuanForce) — The Alliance's Inner Art

A hard-body art in which Hunyuan Qi and Iron Shirt are trained together — the Tiandao Alliance's very own. Hunyuan Qi works inward, Iron Shirt works outward; the two had nothing to do with each other until Grand Protector Iron Lion's line forcibly kneaded them into one — "Only when blades can't cut into you do you have the standing to plant yourself in the middle of the road." Those who train this art grow steadily more solid in build: it truly changes the bones, rather than lending strength for a moment.

• 🔹 Exertion — Iron Curtain (IronCurtain): Hunyuan within, iron cloth without — once it's running, even your pores close. Iron Lion once took seventeen blade cuts at Black Water Pier with this art and stayed on his feet to escort the goods back to headquarters. It burns inner force fast and can't be held for long — this art is for blocking the few blows that would kill you, not for wearing an enemy down.
• 🔹 Trained deep enough, this art reaches a fork in the road — the "Choice of Three Breaths."

🌬️ The Choice of Three Breaths

Trained deep enough, Hunyuan Iron Cloth reaches a fork in the road. Three people in the Alliance each hold one line, and each teaches theirs in person. You may choose only one in your lifetime, and once chosen it can never be changed — not even by changing masters.

• 🔹 Iron Roar (IronRoar) (taught by Iron Lion): The Hunyuan qi no longer flows into skin and muscle but is driven up into the throat, and a low roar bursts out wrapped in force — the listener's insides are thrown into disorder first, and the technique in his hands falls apart on its own. Heavier damage reduction, and it can stagger the opponent in front of you. It burns inner force fast; it is saved for life-or-death moments.
• 🔹 Ghost Breath (GhostBreath) (taught by Ghost Blade Liu): The Hunyuan qi draws inward; your breathing grows so faint it seems gone, and your body heat drops until you are as cold as a wall — the moment whoever is grappling with you blinks, they can never find you again. You break free of close combat at once and sink into the shadows. Can't win, so you leave: this is a thief's art, not a tough guy's.
• 🔹 Ape Breath (ApeBreath) (taught by Little Monkey): You change breath more often than anyone, and in a single crouch and spring you are already somewhere else — it looks undignified, yet your clothes don't take so much as a scratch. For a short while your movement is too fast to catch; the most economical of the three breaths.

"Three people, three roads. Whichever one you set foot on, that's the one others will know you by from then on."

📜 Standing in the Alliance

Hanger-On → Errand Runner → Eyes → Handler → Crew Boss → Hall Keeper — six ranks, the same for everyone. Above Hall Keeper, it depends on which of the Four Arts' paths you walk, and the Alliance calls you by that path's titles:

• 🔹 Steal: Deft Hand → Master Thief → Star-Plucker → Sage of Thieves
• 🔹 Burgle: Night Walker → Eave Runner → Cloud Piercer → Great Outlaw
• 🔹 Rob: Greenwood Brave → Local Tyrant → Underworld Warlord → Lord of the Greenwood
• 🔹 Scam: Broker → Game Master → Thousand-Face Wanderer → Thousand-Face Chief

Above the highest rank, there are only the four youths of forty years ago.

📜 Key Figures

Chief Helmsman · Shen Jiuye — About fifty, the last disciple of "Ghost Hand" among the four founders; he took over at thirty and has held the post for twenty years. In his cane hides the short blade "Snake Tongue" — one stroke to the throat, and he never leaves anyone alive.

Grand Protector · Iron Lion — About forty, a descendant of "Iron Fist," wielding a pair of mountain-splitting axes weighing eighty jin. He once took a Wuxiang Temple warrior monk's Arhat Staff on his bare body.

Intelligence Chief · Deaf Granny — About sixty, a disciple of "Shadow," known in her youth as "Shadowless Hand." She runs Tianji Pavilion and commands more than a hundred informants, with an intelligence network that spans the entire Shuntian Dynasty.

Qingzhou Branch Master · Ghost Blade Liu — About fifty, Shen Jiuye's right-hand man, armed with a three-foot goose-feather saber. He spent more years as an executioner than in the Alliance, and in his own words: "A beheading blade shouldn't make a second sound."

Master of Disguise · Su Xiaotang — About thirty, the granddaughter of "Thousand Faces," whose scamming has reached the stage of Pulling Strings.

Rising Disciple · Little Monkey — Only sixteen, a South City orphan whose lightness skill has reached "Silent on the Tiles"; Deaf Granny calls him a once-in-a-century talent.

📜 Relations with Other Factions

• 🔹 The Court: Mutual use, mutual wariness. This is an "officially recognized underworld" — regular tribute in exchange for a quiet understanding that it won't be purged. As Shen Jiuye puts it: "The court needs us the way people need a latrine."
• 🔹 Wuxiang Temple: Well water and river water keep to themselves. Chief Seat Xuanbei favors wiping the Alliance out, while Abbot Duchen is pragmatic; warrior monks on missions occasionally clash with Alliance members.
• 🔹 Blood God Sect: Sworn enemies. The Blood God Sect hunts Alliance disciples and refugees to cultivate its blood arts; the Tiandao Alliance has put a bounty of one hundred thousand taels of silver on the head of any of its elders.
• 🔹 Shushan Sect: Almost no contact.
• 🔹 Liaoyuan Spear Fort: Business dealings — "business is business."