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Cover of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, Volume 1

Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, Volume 1

core novel 1961 The Condor Trilogy

Record

Original title倚天屠龍記
First published1961
Original language ZH
Work typenovel
Canon statuscore
Reader rating4.46 (242 ratings, collected 2026-09-22)
Page count416
First-edition ISBN9789627461166
Internal chronology1

Synopsis

Set in fourteenth-century China as Mongol Yuan rule weakens, the story follows Zhang Wuji, son of a Wudang swordsman and a woman tied to the outlawed Ming Cult. Orphaned young and afflicted with a rare poison, he is drawn into the world of rival martial-arts sects who are also locked in a decades-long hunt for two legendary weapons, the Heaven-Reliant Sword and the Dragon-Slaying Saber, believed to hold the key to invincibility. As he grows, Zhang Wuji is pulled between competing factions, hidden loyalties, and his own inherited ties to the persecuted cult his father's world once feared.

Where it sits

  • Universe: The Condor Trilogy
  • Series: Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre core; position 1 of 4 in the series' recorded order
  • Author: Jin Yong

Notes

  • ISBN recorded is volume 1 of the Ming Ho (明河社, Hong Kong) four-volume traditional-Chinese edition (21st printing, 2023), the author's own publisher; corrected 2026-10-14 from that edition's volume-4 number, recorded here in error.
  • From the series record (Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre): Core Canon: the original Chinese prose novel (serialized in the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao, 6 July 1961 to 2 September 1963), as split into its standard four-volume paperback edition (Ming Ho Press / 明河社, matching the reader-rating platform's own four-volume listing). No official English translation of this third Condor Trilogy novel has been published as of this pass (only a fan/unofficial online translation exists, not used as a source); the ongoing English translation of the trilogy has so far only covered the first novel, The Legend of the Condor Heroes. This is the prose novel only, distinct from Ma Wing Shing's manhua adaptation of the same story, which is permanently out of scope for this canon and was not consulted for any fact here.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.

Sources

← The Condor Trilogy dossier · All universes

Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.