An epic tale of slaying gods, blending xianxia mystery, interstellar intrigue, and a data-driven Heavenly Dao
In the seventeenth year of Yongchang, Mars appeared to guard the heart of the sky, and a demon star emerged.
Gu Zhao, a night watchman in the Night Patrol Bureau, was born with mystic eyes that could see through the realms of yin and yang, yet he could not unravel the mystery of his own origins. A corpse hung above Vermilion Bird Avenue, a burning lantern in its hands. A human-skin lantern revealed the Empress Dowager’s demonic shadow. A sunken coffin surfaced beneath the Yellow River, its bronze dragon-subduing nails engraved with his birth date. Behind each bizarre case lay a terrifying royal secret: the “Nine Sons’ Sacrifice to Heaven.” The truth was that he himself had been thrown into the Yellow River as a dragon-subduing sacrifice twenty years ago!
Su Jiu’er, an ice-coffin Daoist nun who fled Kunlun, carries a Chaos Key sealed in her heart. She arrives with a bronze yin-yang mirror and stirs Gu Zhao’s erased memories with a single sentence: “You and I were Daoist partners a hundred years ago.” When his mystic eyes awaken to the seventh stage, “Oblivion,” he sees more than the resentment of the dead. He also sees quantum afterimages of interstellar warships and god-slaying code in the data stream.
Painted-skin puppets lurk in the imperial court, and the leader of the witchcraft cult bears the same Vermilion Bird birthmark as Gu Zhao. The armillary sphere at the Imperial Astronomical Bureau spins backward, revealing the Heavenly Dao mainframe of a mechanical civilization three thousand years in the future. A god-slaying game spanning xianxia and the stars quietly begins. The Imperial Jade Seal awakens and opens its eyes. The northern barbarian shaman clans rouse a mechanical god-touched being. And the son who should have remained sealed is reborn through a Wi-Fi signal, smiling as he presents a deadly choice:
“Father, this time, will you save the world or the woman you love?”
From the Night Patrol Bureau of Great Yin to the interstellar battlefield, from the Chaos Ruins to the data graveyard.
This time, the night watchman’s clapper will shatter the fate codes written by the gods.
