At twelve, Lin Che barely survives a wasteland of blood and fire, ending up as an apprentice at a street-corner grocery stall in Qingyang City, scraping by. He carries the grudge of his family's massacre, yet is not even qualified to draw qi into his body. All he can do is clench his fists in the dead of night and silently scream at the phantoms of his parents.
Then an old man in a blue robe appears before a wonton stall. An aged copy of the Art of Qi Drawing and ten lustrous Qi-Gathering Pills pull Lin Che from the mire and set him on the path of cultivation against heaven's will. From a crude cave dwelling on Qingyun Mountain to the first display of the Azure Origin Sword Art, he presses on through thorns, burning his battered body as fuel and his hatred as fire, growing stronger step by step amid desperate scarcity.
No one knows what shocking secret lies behind the sword marks left by the massacre of the Lin family. Nor can anyone foresee that this boy who crawled out of a mountain of corpses and sea of blood will one day spread the embers of his life across the entire cultivation world.
