A pendant bears an ancient pact.
A memory awakens in a boy's soul.
A journey stretches across the boundaries between humans, the uncanny, and demons.
Xing Hao was born amid disaster, but a mysterious Daoist priest gave him a pendant that kept him safe. After he turned six, fragments of memories that did not belong to him began surfacing in his mind, unveiling a bizarre and fantastical world. At the age of fifteen, he enters a Daoist temple and learns that his soul is unusual, bearing the broken inheritance of the ancient “Wardens,” whose duty was to safeguard the balance of the world.
From then on, he walks between the bustle of the human world and the secrets of uncanny realms. He witnesses the obsessions of resentful earthbound spirits and confronts the sinister schemes of those who create corpse puppets. He first tests his strength in the small city of Yuanjiang, then tempers his Daoist heart amid the whirlpool of the capital. Traveling far and wide, he encounters the purity of spirits on snowy plains and the eerie mysteries of the witchcraft and poison arts of the southern frontier.
He has seen loved ones pass away, and he has seen warmth among demons and uncanny beings. He understands that those who are not of our kind do not necessarily have different hearts. Simple slaughter and suppression only breed deeper hatred. In a world where purity and corruption mingle and good and evil are hard to distinguish, he chooses a far more difficult path: understanding and balance, not destruction.
Across nearly two centuries, he grows from a confused boy into a powerful figure of his age. At last, he gathers sparks of hope and establishes the “Uncanny Realm Envoys,” an organization that transcends the barriers between species and sustains coexistence through pacts and rules, achieving a fragile peace between humans, the uncanny, and demons for the first time.
In his twilight years, he drifts alone in a small boat on the river, memories surging back like the tide.
