Lin Mo, an errand disciple of the Flowing Cloud Sect, has been stuck at the third layer of Body Tempering for three years. Everyone in the sect agrees he is a good-for-nothing, and he can barely survive by secretly hoarding moldy wheat cakes. Then, on a stormy night, a dying cultivator from the Blood Fiend Sect stumbles into a ruined temple, leaving behind a bronze token engraved with the words "Can only be opened by those at the Qi Condensation Realm" and a bloodstained copy of the Blood Fiend Body Tempering Art.
The token burns through his palm and opens up a completely different path. Meridians that cannot be trained with orthodox techniques can actually be forced open by sinister energy; boulders too heavy for someone at the Body Tempering Realm to lift can be sent tumbling down half a mountain with the power of fiendish energy. But the name of the Blood Fiend Sect's demonic cultivators follows him like a shadow. The Flowing Cloud Sect's pursuit, the orthodox factions' scorn, and the Blood Fiend Sect's internal predation all become shackles around his neck.
With the bronze token in hand, he has fiendish power in his left that can shake mountains even at the Body Tempering Realm, and an identity in his right that could be exposed at any moment. When orthodox disciples shout, "Destroy the demons and uphold the Dao!" as they swing their swords at him, and when Blood Fiend Sect elders smile as they offer him cultivation resources drenched in vital blood, Lin Mo finally understands: so-called righteousness and evil have never been words carved on a token. They are the path he had no right to choose while trapped at the Body Tempering Realm, and the tribulation he cannot escape after reaching the Qi Condensation Realm.
He will climb by standing on his reputation as a "good-for-nothing," and make those who once trampled him see that even an ant at the Body Tempering Realm can use the light of the Fiend Token to punch a hole in the heavens. But on this road, every time he advances a realm, more blood stains his hands, and he moves another inch away from the "orthodox cultivator" he once hoped to become. Yet as Lin Mo looks at the bronze token's mark growing ever deeper in his palm, he smiles. He has long since lost the chance to turn back, so he might as well let this Fiend Token burn a new world into existence in the cultivation realm.
