The Nine Cauldrons wept blood, and Mars encroached upon the heavens. The deposed prince Xiao Yin seized the imperial jade seal, which could devour lifespans, and ascended the throne over his brothers’ corpses. The Wolf Khan Tuoba Hao split open the Iron Horse River, frozen for a century, and pointed his curved blade at the Central Plains. The shaman Bai Ye sacrificed a hundred thousand lives to the demon god, and poisonous miasma swallowed three provinces. When the mechanism core of the Vermilion Bird Tower shattered the clouds, a featherfolk prophet glimpsed the truth from a falling Cloud City: this catastrophe was in fact a thousand-year-old deception laid by the first emperor. Should the Nine Cauldrons be reforged to protect the land, or should the demon god be allowed to devour the Nine Provinces? Beneath the Redwater River, the Xuanyuan Sword stirred from its slumber with a mournful cry, while deep in the underground palace of the Jixia Academy, the burned remnants of the River Luo Heavenly Book quietly began to reassemble the celestial map…
