As the Shang dynasty gives way to the Zhou, undercurrents surge in the Eastern Sea. Ao Bing, the Dragon King’s third son, is ordered by the Heavenly Court to collect a hundred thousand human souls. But at Chentang Pass, he encounters his destined enemy: Nezha, the young son of Commander Li Jing. The seven-year-old boy wears meteorite shackles around his feet, and when he loses control, indigo dragon breath pours from all seven orifices, stirring the sealed bones of Gonggong deep in the eye of the Eastern Sea.
Blood seeps from the golden hoop around Ao Bing’s horns, and the shard of a Spirit Pearl hidden beneath his reverse scales burns like a brand. He recognizes the lost secret pact of the Dragon Palace engraved on the longevity lock around Nezha’s neck. Then, as he teeters on the brink of death, he glimpses a shocking truth: a whiskered dragon who betrayed the Dragon Clan a century ago gouged out his own pearl to save a mortal woman, and the forbidden bloodline he left behind became a Demon Pill within her child. As the Red Armillary Sash entwines their mingled blood, the white bones of Gonggong open their hollow eyes on the seabed. The story of Li Jing’s dragon-slaying and pagoda-forging thirty years ago, together with the divinations of the current Imperial Preceptor, Shen Gongbao, points to an astonishing deception spanning both the human and divine realms.
Nezha is burdened with a fate to slay a god, and every drop of his blood erodes Ao Bing’s draconic essence. Cursed by the Heavenly Court, Ao Bing bears memories of Nezha’s past life on every reverse scale. From their fight to the death on Chentang Pass’s sea-sacrifice altar to the blood-stained warning left by the remains of Yinglong in the secret realm of Guixu, the sworn enemies are forced to wield twin wind-and-fire halberds together and face the extraterrestrial demon in the blood-red vortex on the night of the lunar eclipse. When the Red Armillary Sash reveals its true form as the whiskered dragon’s sinew, and the roar of the whiskered dragon’s soul rises from the bottom of the Exquisite Pagoda, they will finally learn the truth: the Spirit Pearl and the Demon Pill share the same source, and the one who slays a god must ultimately become his own salvation.
