The Divine Lineage of Shenxiao

(This book draws on research into real Daoist traditions. Please do not practice the hand seals described in the book at midnight.) On a midsummer night in 2022, the constellations above a shopping mall in the Central Plains hung upside down in the sky, an eerie sight. The 112th headmaster of the Shenxiao Sect led thirty-seven direct disciples into a bloody battle against Japan’s Nine Gatherings Sect, using the Profound Heaven Jade Purity Formation to fight across the Nine Heavens. When the final bolt of purple lightning split the blood-red sky, only charred corpses remained on the bronze altar, along with Wang Tianming, kneeling outside the formation’s center. A year later, Wang Tianming descended the mountain, following the headmaster’s dying wish: restore the glory of the Shenxiao Sect! On the third day after the bronze compass began to turn, Wang Tianming encountered a Snake Mother demon shedding its skin in an abandoned village. On Leigong Island in Guangzhou, he came across a nine-legged fish undergoing tribulation. He unexpectedly witnessed a Buddhist master summon a demon Rakshasa. Then, as the jade-bone flute that fed on Buddhist scriptures began to play, a blood-written Fire Over Lake Kui hexagram of the Three Pure Ones appeared in the murals of an ancient temple’s underground palace as it collapsed. The Soul-Summoning Bell rings by itself every night at midnight, while thirty-seven shadowy figures wander through the incense ash. The young man bearing the last spark of the Shenxiao Daoist tradition does not know that the honest brothers who explore the paths of ghost soldiers with him, the archaeology professor who deciphers demon talismans inscribed on oracle bones, and even the forensic doctor he keeps running into at crime scenes all bear the lightning scars of the Profound Heaven Jade Purity Formation.