In the fourteenth year of Tianbao, a string of heart-removal murders rocked Chang’an’s ghost market. While examining the bodies, Li Mobai, an assistant minister of the Court of Judicial Review, discovered traces of a Western Regions “life-extending gu” in a victim’s heart. The interplay between the bronze gears at the scene and a fragment of the “Tui Bei Tu” drew him into a shocking conspiracy that threatened the fate of the Tang dynasty. Beneath Chang’an’s outward show of peace and prosperity, undercurrents ran deep: the power struggle between the Tiance Palace and the Black Armor Guards, and the covert clash between the Western Regions’ Esoteric Sect and Miaojiang gu masters, all centered on the legendary “Kunlun Mirror,” said to predict the future, and the “Taixu Cauldron,” said to grant immortality.
As a covert agent of the Black Armor Guards, Li Mobai was driven by a mission to avenge his father. But as he investigated, he gradually discovered that Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, in his quest for immortality, had joined forces with An Lushan to refine the “Taixu Cauldron” using the souls of a hundred thousand people. This was the root of the “An Lushan Rebellion” foretold in the “Tui Bei Tu.” Meanwhile, A Man, a Miaojiang saintess who had infiltrated Chang’an under the alias “Hongxiao,” sought revenge. The deadly combination of the crimson whip at her waist and her golden silkworm gu was not only a weapon against the court, but also the key to uncovering the secret of the “Taixu Cauldron.” The two went from using each other to entrusting their lives to one another, yet their opposing loyalties doomed them to tragedy: A Man was the final sacrifice for the “Taixu Cauldron.” To stop the cauldron from being completed, Li Mobai had no choice but to use the fate-reading techniques of the “Tui Bei Tu” to face the villain Xuanji Zi in a final battle where both would perish.
