Frosty Mist, Rippling Shadows: The Phoenix Perches in the Paulownia

The most poisonous Gu is hidden in the scent of wheat from Hanyan Village.

The moment the village girl Han Yanlan has the blood scab over her collarbone gouged out by an evil cultivator, a Teng Snake Gu Shell bursts from the earth. It is the living seal of her identity as a "spirit child of the leyline." Her childhood friend Mo Lingxiao swallows a Soul-Devouring Gu to protect her, but inside Qingyun Sect's Soul-Devouring Array, he sees the crescent-shaped birthmark on the back of her neck absorbing the Creator's lingering soul.

The cry of the Phoenix perched in the parasol tree tears open her memories: the massacre twenty years ago was actually the moment a Gu vessel, cultivated from the bones and blood of infants by cultivators, came into the world. When Soul-Devouring marks begin crawling over Mo Lingxiao's fingertips, Han Yanlan finally understands: she is both the living coffin sealing the Creator and the key to activating a sacrifice to the spirit veins. And the wound on her collarbone is seeping... Leyline Blood, capable of corroding heaven and earth.