A blood-red moon hangs high above the heavens, while black snow seeping from the base of the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda drenches the mortal world.
Lin Qingya, a traitor to his master, trudges onward bearing the sin of murder. Beneath the black silk bound over his left eye, demonic threads stirred by a love worm devour what little clarity remains to him. When he discovers that the enemies who slaughtered his sect are refining the spiritual veins of the Nine Provinces into a key to unseal the Demon Realm, fragments of the shattered Nine Heavens Demon-Subduing Mirror lead him toward an even deeper conspiracy. The Demon Realm's saintess Yin Wuyue, who rebuilt her body with his heart's blood, hides the truth of his master's murder among the ribs of her umbrella. The spine of Shen Qingge, the blind woman who follows the Heavenly Secrets, houses the core of the spiritual vein buried there by his enemy. Even the life-extending pills handed to him by a black-market merchant are laced with dragon-serpent venom that could turn him into a puppet of slaughter.
Reforging the Demon-Subduing Mirror requires Mourning Sand, but every tear shed by the saintess hastens the collapse of the Demon Realm's seal. To protect all living beings, he must accept the sin of slaughter, yet every place his sword points is haunted by the spirits of old friends. When the inverted cluster of Demon-Suppressing Pagodas crashes toward the mortal world and altered memories awaken beneath the blood moon, the scattered saviors finally discover the truth:
The karmic flames that consume heaven and earth never came from a rift in the Demon Realm. They came from that wisp of living soul she planted in his veins with a love worm on the night she cut out his core.
