Zhu Yuan: Half a Scale Illuminates the Night

Hidden in an ice cave on Zhangwei Mountain is a secret bound in chains: Zhu Yuan, the son of a mortal and a Candle Dragon. Bronze scales cover his left shoulder, while frost-white flesh grows on his right. His left eye can glimpse fragments of the dead, and his right can reflect fleeting images of the future. For twenty years, the sight of his mother collapsing in a pool of blood has burned again and again in his left eye. The broken jade tablet and the fragmentary image of a bronze mask have become shackles he cannot escape. To uncover the truth behind his mother's death, he descends the mountain with iron chains and a two-winged Bi Fang carrying the cold flames of the underworld in its beak, only to stumble into a vast web woven from divine authority, lies, and fate. His mother's blood lies hidden in the shadow of the Soul-Suppressing Bow in the Kingdom of Woye. A blazing fire awaits in the future of the nine-tailed foxes of the Qingqiu Kingdom. The broken God-Slaying Stone in the Sunken Abyss reveals the sins of his Candle Dragon father. And high above, Dijun is using the day and night of the entire Great Wilderness as bait, waiting for Zhu Yuan to become his next pawn. When his left eye finally sees the truth of his mother trading her life for the jade tablet, and his right eye beholds the end in which he becomes the boundary between day and night, he at last understands: being of mixed blood was never a curse of division. It means bearing the blazing force of divinity while embracing the cold tenderness of humanity. The moment his chains break, half his scales reflect the night, and his fire-forged bones bear the day. With a body half mortal and half divine, he will reshape the laws of heaven and earth monopolized by the gods. “I am not the son of the Candle Dragon, nor anyone's pawn. I am Zhu Yuan, and I choose my own balance.”