Manji, the immortal swordsman, lies imprisoned in the bakufu stronghold of the mysterious Habaki Kagimura. Seeking to impart the life-extending powers of Manji's kessen-chu bloodworms to other humans, Kagimura orders his medical examiners to discover the secrets of Manji's amazing regenerative abilities. Using a series of convicts as live subjects in an increasingly grisly series of twisted experiments, Burando, Kagimura's lead medical examiner, begins to grow more desperate and sickened with each horrifying failure. And through it all, Manji lives, and regenerates, and bides his time for the moment that he can pay back his tormentors . . . limb by limb!

Dark, violent, and yet possessing subtle emotional depth, Blade re-invents the traditional period samurai tale by imbuing it with a streetwise modernist sensibility to create an epic tale of incomparable skill and audacious reach.

FOR MATURE READERS