In an age when spiritual energy is scarce and heaven and earth lie silent, cultivating immortality is little more than a means of scraping by for tens of thousands of years while waiting for the great upheaval to come. Artifacts, pills, talismans, and beasts are all external things, useless on the path to eternal life, and serve only as false tools for claiming kingship and prestige. Yet cultivators of the heretical path refine souls into ghosts, trapping them in the mortal realm. When their own lives near their end, they refine their own souls and devour the ghosts they have raised, allowing them to scrape by for several thousand more years. Their cultivation remains intact, and may even advance further. Though the imperial dynasty has explicitly branded this method a sinister path, the powerful secretly practice it, all tacitly understanding one another. Can the path of ghost refinement lead to the Great Dao? Until the great upheaval arrives, every path to immortality is nothing more than a strange tale told by a storyteller.
