The Boundary of Steles

On the night of the wake, when I was twelve, my father's hand suddenly clamped around mine from inside the coffin. A crack opened as the coffin's seven-inch sealing nail was pried loose. In the dead man's palm lay a green crystal, burning hot to the touch. He pressed it into my hand. "This belongs to your real father. You're his son, but remember, you're Gu Dashan's son." As soon as he finished speaking, the corpse before my eyes burned down to a skeleton. Outside the courtyard, soul hunters who had caught the scent of spirits were already climbing over the wall. My birth father, Xuan Yuan, the former Lord of the Planes, slept inside the crystal. Back then, he and my mother sealed away the outsiders with their origins, and both perished. Their remnant souls shattered into several fragments and drifted across the Nine Heavens. A crystal shard, a fragment of my father's soul, a breathing technique, and an academy token. I kept my strength hidden for four years. At sixteen, I went to the city to have my spiritual aptitude tested. Green light shot up from the stele, but I forcibly suppressed it until it showed only middling talent. Deep in Spirit Mist Valley, I came across a girl no one else could see, a plane spirit who had just taken human form. Barefoot, she asked me, "Why is your heart beating so fast?" My parents' remnant souls are scattered across the realms. The last fragment is imprisoned in the outsiders' ancestral lands. In this life, I don't seek immortality. I only want to become strong enough to bring the dead back from the brink, one by one. This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance is coincidental. Please do not imitate.