In the twenty-third year of Chengping, undercurrents stirred through the martial world. Wang Che, young master of a family allied by marriage to Medicine King Valley, possessed peerless comprehension but was born with severed meridians. Whenever he secretly practiced sword moves beneath the moonlit shadow of Sword Pavilion, he had to endure the agony of a thousand ants gnawing at his heart. On the day of the clan tournament, he used a half-learned version of the Astonishing Sword to break his cousin's killing move, only to fall from the arena amid the excruciating pain of his meridians snapping. He became a laughingstock across the city.
When an envoy from the Xu family publicly tore up the engagement contract, no one noticed the blood-red patterns spreading across the shattered dragon-and-phoenix jade pendants. That night, in the depths of a frigid pool, the eyes of a gravely wounded white wolf demon reflected ancient demon script that resonated with the markings inside Wang Che. The beast-body cultivation art, lost eight hundred years ago when the Heavenly Gate collapsed, was awakening within the young man's shattered meridians.
From then on, the outcast of Medicine King Valley held the most dangerous bargaining chip of all. By day, he dealt with the Three Sects and Nine Schools; in secret, he crossed wits with the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion. He also had to endure the violent legacy of an ancient beast in a mortal body. When a forbidden cultivation art collided with the thousand-year secrets of an alchemy clan, the blood-red qi rising from the young man's palm would finally reveal the most astonishing truth of an era when spiritual energy was in decline.
