When the Nine Songs End in Sorrow

Across the Great Wilderness, the three great divine clans of Shennong, Gaoxin, and Xuanyuan rule their own territories. Beneath the sky screen, where they seem to stand in balance, fester the blood feuds and ambitions left behind by the ancient war between the gods. Xuanyuan princess Ji Yunhua was born under the prophecy that she would "hold the calamity of war in her hands," yet she insists on measuring the world's suffering with a healer's compassion. Li Yuan, a young noble of the Shennong clan, can summon every beast with his flute, while an unknown scroll of celestial signs lies hidden beneath his sword. The two first meet in the Cangwu Mountain valley over an immortal herb that can restore the dead to life, and from then on, the red thread of fate draws them into the whirlpool of divine-clan intrigue.

She is a lonely bird bound by incense and ritual in the ancestral shrine of Xuanyuan, longing for the smoke rising from humble hearths more than for a throne. He is an exiled immortal cursed by the stars before the Shennong altar, using his irreverence as armor to conceal his fate. When the immortal herb's appearance stirs the Jiuli shamans, and Yunhua discovers a secret fire flowing in her blood that can awaken an ancient God of War, the star chart in Li Yuan's sleeve suddenly reveals that she is the "key to chaos beneath heaven." Should he follow his clan's command and imprison her beneath the Shennong Cauldron, or protect her as she blooms into a flower of love amid the primordial chaos?

The winds of the Great Wilderness sweep over the summit of Mount Buzhou, yet cannot disperse the thousand-year enmity in the blood of Xuanyuan and Shennong. As battle flags billow, she is the queen who stands sword in hand atop the walls of Xuanyuan City, while he is the strategist at the Shennong camp, whose plans leave nothing to chance. As the stars wheel through the heavens, she is the moonlight he hides beneath the Yunmeng Marsh, and he is the song of parting she engraves into her jade flute. When the flames of divine war consume their promises, and the mystery of their birth reveals a stunning conspiracy between the ancient gods and demons, Yunhua and Li Yuan must make their choice amid divine punishment and tribulations of love: will they cast each other into eternal ruin with their own hands, or become candles themselves and light this vast world, tainted by the stench of power?