Li Wujiao, a young mine slave in the Sea of Sinful Gu, refines a forbidden gu insect to survive. From then on, he offers his blood kin as sacrifices and feeds on all living things. The mark of the Kin-Eating Gu on his palm is both a curse condemning him to eternal damnation and a vicious blade for stealing heaven's secrets and devouring fate to prove the Dao.
Han Mu, born with a useless spirit root in the Nine Provinces Spirit Realm, awakens a mysterious broken pot in a heap of medicinal dregs. Only then does he learn that this dilapidated furnace, which swallows and exhales spirit stones, is a heaven-defying divine artifact capable of refining myriad poisons and altering one's aptitude, as well as the source of a calamity that will bring the Heavenly Dao's pursuit.
When a massive rockslide seals off their escape route deep inside the mine,
when the Gu Demon's heart-devouring blade pierces the chest of a mortal cultivator,
when the gray-white light of the Creation Furnace burns the very essence of the gu insects
two souls abandoned by the world, surrounded by corpse-rotting millipedes, form the most fragile alliance on earth, founded on betrayal and bound by survival.
He needs the furnace's flames to temper his gu insects and dispel the Heavenly Dao's backlash;
he needs his plunder to nourish his spirit root and burn away the shackles of fate.
From the Sea of Sinful Gu to the rifts in the Heavenly Dao, from the war over spirit roots to the wasteland of ashes:
Li Wujiao uses sin as his ladder, swearing to refine the Primordial Chaos Gu into power in his palm;
Han Mu uses his mortal body as a vessel, gladly offering immortality as bait to fish for the truth of the ages.
"In this era of the Black Vessel, "
Li Wujiao crushes divine bones as his swarm gnaws at the starry sky. "The so-called Heavenly Dao is nothing but a gu that has yet to awaken within me."
Han Mu ignites the Creation Furnace, its flames illuminating the inscription on the stele. "And you and I are both sacrificial inscriptions, not yet dry, carved upon it."
The countdown to the collapse of cultivation civilization has begun.
The contest between gu and furnace will ultimately forge the laws anew in blood.
