As a child, the protagonist was caught stealing money and severely punished by his father, who cut off three of his fingers. He wandered the streets from then on, until he stumbled upon fortune-telling by chance. After secretly reading The Deep Sea and the Flat Earth, he tried to imitate a fortune-teller, but faced one setback after another and was exposed by a fellow practitioner. On a rainy night at the City God Temple, he met a benefactor who taught him the art of divination. After getting his first taste of success, he left home following a series of hardships, forged proof that he was blind, and set out to make his way in the world.
When he first entered the jianghu, the protagonist used a fake-blindness trick to swindle money at the City God Temple, only to be exposed by a Daoist priest and horribly disfigured with sulfuric acid. In his darkest hour, he found a fragmentary scroll and used his blood to make rubbings of its text. He struggled to learn the ways of the blind, enduring constant bullying along the way. Strange phenomena surrounding the scroll helped him grasp the basics of divination, allowing him to predict the weather accurately and giving him resolve to seek revenge.
As the story unfolds, the protagonist unexpectedly gains the ability to see at night because of the acid damage. Practicing the fragmentary scroll brings a backlash: black blood streams from his left eye, and his blind eye opens to the realm of yin and yang. He subdues a little ghost and breaks through a ghostly maze, but after a blood-red pupil first appears, he is plagued by spirits. Seeking a way to lift the curse, he searches for his master and faces dangers such as a corpse coming back to life. The scroll is finally revealed in full, but his left eye goes blind.
After becoming an apprentice while blind, the protagonist undergoes three years of grueling training and learns all kinds of divination and physiognomy. Once his training is complete, he ventures into the jianghu, settling legal disputes, investigating haunted houses, and banishing evil spirits. He also deals with warlords, reading the dragon veins and arranging feng shui for them. He is given a fragmentary scroll and discovers his master's secret. Later, he is invited to inspect a burial site and ventures deep along the Road to the Yellow Springs, where he encounters vengeful spirits from his past life and a thousand-year-old corpse. Though he succeeds in subduing them, he is badly wounded and given The Green Satchel Classic.
Afterward, a warlord's treasure map sets off a series of adventures. The protagonist pits his wits against tomb raiders and retrieves the Heshibi, only to be hunted by the warlord. He lays a Trapped Dragon Formation, nearly bringing about the destruction of both sides, and ultimately retreats to live in the mountains...
