On the Jiuyue Continent, where spirit-beast contracts determine one's fate, Lin Qingyu, the young master of the Qingluan Clan, seized a bloodstained destiny. During the trial ceremony, he was forced to contract with a mutated Qingluan whose wing bones had been shattered, and became the laughingstock of his family. When his cousin's Golden Crow flames shattered the spirit-testing stele, Lin Qingyu glimpsed a secret star-palace inscription carved among the Qingluan's ragged feathers, left behind by his father before his death.
Armed with a Gu King egg gifted by his maid Xiaodie and half a volume of the Compendium of All Beasts, the boy embarked on a desperate journey. An assassin's blade split the rainy night, but could not sever the Qingluan's newly reborn wings of wind and thunder. The poisonous miasma of the forbidden witchcraft lands devoured life, yet caused ancient formation patterns to emerge on a Blackwater Tortoise's shell. When the Western Regions' Mountain-Moving Ape shouldered the Pillar That Holds Up the Sky, and the Southern Border's Jade Mantis severed the threads of fate, he finally understood the truth revealed by the star-patterned compass: the supposedly "impure-blooded" Qingluan was actually half the divine soul torn away by the master of the Star Palace at their fall three thousand years ago.
Meanwhile, the stubborn maid who was always saying, "Gu worms are more reliable than people," was burying a Heart-Linking Gu in her own heart. The secret alliance's blood-sacrifice formation had already bared its fangs in the clouds. Stroking the Qingluan's brilliant, reborn feathers, the boy raised his brows and smiled lightly as seven great powers closed in to kill him. "They say spirit-contract masters can never contract more than three spirit beasts in their lifetime. But what if... I am the Compendium of All Beasts itself?"
