This is the arc where the swords take a back seat to the arguments, and somehow it gets tenser. Season two burned the Mohist stronghold down and left Tianming with a legacy he never asked for. Now the story drops him into Sanghai, into the Confucian manor and the politics of the Hundred Schools, where Zhang Liang smiles his way through problems Ge Nie would solve with Yuan Hong, and Wei Zhuang is still out there sharpening Sha Chi. The pleasure is watching a kid who used to be pure comic relief get measured against scholars, princes and Yin Yang assassins, and slowly stop being the smallest person in the room. It is early Chinese 3D animation, stiff in places and gorgeous in others, but the choreography still moves like proper wuxia and the guqin cues still hit. Thirty-four episodes of ancient China treating philosophy like a bladed weapon, and Ge Nie standing behind the boy the whole way.

Tianming's journey continues straight from where the last season left off, as the fight for the Mohist school reaches its end. From there, fresh alliances form while new enemies step forward to challenge him.