A sea of blood and bitter vengeance lies beneath the laughter; an age-old killing game hides in every cup.
Three hundred years later, the most notorious young wastrel in Qingzhou City holds a gilded wine cup, its surface reflecting the raging flames that consumed Tiangong Pavilion all those years ago.
Lin An wears a frivolous smile, but the Nine-Orifice Furnace sealed in his chest has just devoured its seventh Holy Clan token. This profligate with a "worthless constitution" is the living dead, his heart carved out and his body stolen on the night Tiangong Pavilion was massacred.
Chu Zhaoran's wrist, holding a cup of tea, is wrapped in spirit-devouring chains. Her Thousand-Machinery Eye can see the flow of spiritual power throughout the world, yet cannot tell whether the Profound Crystal Dew offered by the man beside her hides a scheme more poisonous than a curse mark. When corpse blood stains her hair and the gap in the city's protective formation glows with the same blue light as Lin An's heart, their alliance, born of poisoned wine and betrayal, will tear open the cultivation world's bloodiest lie.
"You thought I was only playing five moves ahead?" Lin An crushes a bronze counting bead, and Qingzhou City becomes a deadly chessboard at his fingertips. "No. From the moment you drank your first cup of tea, you were already my puppet."
On the day the ancient mechanical city reappears, the heads of the Nine Great Holy Clans are horrified to discover:
The child they personally killed all those years ago is returning from the underworld astride a Golden Lion Beast.
The spirit-devouring cauldron they drained of all value reflects in its eyes the truth they have never dared to face.
And the bloodstained "Myriad Forms Pivot" from three hundred years ago has long since become the strings attached to every cultivator's soul.
So, will you be the disciple who kills his master, or the piece that kills a god?
