Stars as blades, passion as ink. When the ninefold Star Palace crumbles into a prison, a young man takes up a bloodstained Starfall Edict and sets out to rewrite the laws of Heaven.
Lin Xuan, the good-for-nothing young heir of the Lin family in the Eastern Domain, suffers a backlash from a Nether Abyss curse at his coming-of-age ceremony. His fiancée tears up their marriage contract in front of everyone and humiliates his clan. Yet she doesn't know that a blackened family jade pendant hides a shocking secret: three hundred years ago, a god-slayer massacred the star domains.
On the night his primordial Star Soul awakens, the chill of the Nine Netherworlds turns into chains, and the seven ancient clans reveal their bloodstained blades. An inverted bronze coffin awakens in Star Burial Valley. A frozen Star-Hunting Colossus opens its eyes in the Northern Domain. And Ye Qingxue, his childhood sweetheart, has become the vessel for the Nether Lord's resurrection.
“You think the Starfall Edict is a sacred artifact that can save the world?” His ancestor's bloodstained phantom laughs maniacally in his sea of consciousness. “It's the curse we made when the nine of us divided up a god to devour!”
In his left hand is his father's ruined body, corroded by the Nether River. In his right is his dear friend's body, on the verge of crystallizing forever. Lin Xuan stands atop the shattered Star Gate and sees the truth behind the ninefold Heavenly Vault: the so-called Heaven-Reaching Realm is merely a prison boundary drawn by god-slayers for ants like them.
Every star in this world is a hostage.
