Chen Yan's father disappeared twenty years ago. The only clue is half of a bloodstained bronze talisman. In search of the truth, Chen Yan enters Lotusheart Slope, a place rumored to devour all living things, only to have an iron ring locked around his ankle. Amid miasma and phantom formations, his father's apparition mingles with the shrieks of the Tomb Guardian Fiend. The geomantic instrument spins wildly, pointing toward Coldwater Valley in the far north. It turns out his father's disappearance was tied from the start to disturbances in the earth's ley lines and the mysterious "Lotusheart Project."
In Snowfall Town on the northern frontier, Chen Yan unexpectedly reunites with his first love, Lin Wei. She is not only a witness to the strange events in Cold Creek, but her grandmother also shares a long-buried pact with Chen Yan's father. When half of a jade pendant is joined with the other half, golden light bursts forth, accompanied by a whisper: "Lotusheart must be nurtured by two bloodlines." The bloodlines of the two families begin to resonate.
Pursued by shadow fiends and guided by snow wolves, they follow in their fathers' footsteps deep into Coldwater Valley. As the countdown to the opening of an ice coffin ticks away, the secrets buried deep in the earth's ley lines, the unfinished duty of their fathers, and the obsessions hidden within the bronze talisman and blood-jade lotus heart are gradually revealed. And amid their perilous exploration, Chen Yan and Lin Wei come to understand, in each other's eyes, a love that reaches beyond the past.
