In the Age of Golden Cores, where gears mesh, impoverished cultivator Li Xuanchen is forced into an interstellar conspiracy spanning three thousand years.
Beneath the neon archways of the Cultivation Market, cyber cultivators ride quantum flying swords toward the imperial examinations, unaware that their Golden Cores are being forged into anchors for interstellar colonization. Armed with half a shard from a pickle jar, Li Xuanchen dissects a cyber cultivator and discovers a jade slip engraved with his mother’s birth date. It turns out to be the key to the ancient Taotie Cauldron, and the Yinfu Sect has already implanted a tenth dragon vein in his spine!
When an army of clones crawls out of the Dragon-Locking Well and mechanical Buddhas chant a blockchain version of the Rebirth Mantra, his mother’s double pupils gaze upon the mortal world from within a bronze cauldron. Only then does Li Xuanchen understand:
The so-called Great Dao of cultivation is merely a program written by an alien civilization;
The so-called warmth of the mortal world is the sharpest blade for slaying gods.
