The Gear of a Hesitant Heart

This is another world where gears dance with runes, and steam intertwines with spiritual energy. Ancient machines rumble to life under the power of spiritual cores, steel behemoths stride across smog-shrouded wastelands, and beneath towering chimneys and forests of pipes, ancient cultivators and rising engineers battle for control of the world.

Mo Hanzhou was once a renowned mechanical genius, as well as an ordinary man who loved with all his heart. Seven years ago, his cultivation partner, Su Li, gave her life to protect a city on the verge of spiritual leyline collapse. Using herself as a conduit, she scattered her soul to stabilize the rampaging spiritual source, leaving behind only a cold body and a wisp of soul so faint it was almost impossible to sense. Since then, Mo Hanzhou has cast aside his glory and hidden himself in a filthy underground workshop, keeping company with his beloved as she sleeps in a crystal coffin. He obsessively studies forbidden knowledge, combining ancient soul-summoning techniques with the most precise spiritual machinery to forge a legendary creation: the Gear Heart. He believes that once this mechanical heart, a fusion of life alchemy and soul runes, is complete, he will be able to call Su Li's scattered soul back from the world and grant her eternal life and a heartbeat. However, the core materials needed for the Gear Heart vanished with the lost civilization of ancient alchemy. The only clue points to the deadly wasteland known as the “Eternal Mist” and the many factions watching it hungrily. Love has turned to obsession, hope teeters on the brink of madness, and Mo Hanzhou has reserved what little reason and tenderness he has left for the woman in the coffin, then