By Slender West Lake in Yangzhou, the Old Locust Tree Teahouse, also known as Fatty Ji's, rested amid the bustle of everyday life. Beneath its faded “Tea” banner, the retired swordsman Shangguan Daidao and Su Yingying, whose wrist bore a tattoo of a withered lotus, quietly ran the teahouse. A Fu, the young waiter who had forgotten his past, was blessed with uncanny good fortune, while the stooped storyteller, Old Master Huangfu, concealed a startling history. An ordinary martial arts tea contest unexpectedly brought forth an old tofu seller with stone-shattering external power, an overbearing internal martial arts instructor, and a mysterious elder carrying a secret sword from a former dynasty.
The contest had yet to reach its end, but catastrophe had already descended! Netherworld flames engulfed the beams, corpses surged from beneath the City God Temple, and the dragon aura of the Imperial Jade Seal burst into the sky! The teahouse floor split open, and the hundred-year-old locust tree sank roots into the void, winding around a massive bronze cauldron inscribed with the “Illustrated Compendium of the Divine Farmer.” A Fu's dragonlike spine cracked as the patterns of farming resonated with the Imperial Jade Seal. Huangfu revealed the secret of his three lifetimes of reincarnation, and the tortoiseshell in his hand turned out to be the key to questioning the Way of Heaven!
A skin-flaying invitation descended from the sky, and chains of copper-rust taxes bound the world! Fuxi's question to Heaven hung overhead like blood: Who can restrain the bottomless greed of the human heart? How can the dragon veins of the nation's fortune be locked away? How can the lives left hanging upside down be saved? Princes revealed themselves, wrongful deaths came to light, blood curses threatened to wipe out entire families, and treasures lay hidden beneath the river… All of it surged together into a flood that threatened to destroy the world.
Yet when Heaven sets the banquet, people light their own lamps! The withered-lotus teahouse owner, the bone-burning shopkeeper, the young man burdened by fate, and the struggling common folk finally answered Huangfu, the desperate man holding aloft a lamp, as he roared. Together, they set a broken bowl upon the frozen earth and kindled a blazing fire within their blood:
“Come, on, it's, time, to, eat!”
The people's souls fed the flames as the giant cauldron steamed. The Imperial Jade Seal shattered like a star, descending from the Nine Heavens. The warmth of mortal life crashed into Heaven's banquet, overturning the skies in silence!
…
The jianghu's winds and rains rise at the teahouse; the Nine Tripods and netherworld enter the game.
The martial path begins, the Nine Tripods return; one bow to Heaven's Way shatters the cooking smoke.
With three feet of startling hall, he tells the people's tale; a bowl of everyday warmth lights Heaven's lamp.
