This is a world of cultivation, but spiritual energy is poisonous.
Breathing in spiritual energy nourishes not only one's cultivation, but also a baleful poison that eats into the bones and heart, along with inner demons. The so-called “pure water” is merely poisoned wine that delays the corrosion; the so-called “blessed lands” are really bug jars for selecting “suitable resources.” The cultivation civilization has become distorted by chronic poison, and the path to immortality is crowded with struggling prisoners and maddened hunters.
Lu Chen, a mine slave with a rare “empty spirit root,” swings his pick in darkness three hundred zhang underground every day, struggling amid the sweet, bloody stench of death from the blood crystal mines. A mining disaster lets him glimpse the world's cruel truth, and also leads him to unexpectedly acquire a tattered scroll and a mysterious metal token.
From passively enduring corrosive qi devouring his body to actively fighting poison with poison; from fleeing for his life deep in the mine tunnels to boarding the “Kunpeng Tower,” which travels between the Nine Domains… he is forced onto a perilous road strewn with thorns. Along the way, he will meet a group of “outsiders” who have likewise been abandoned by their age: a fugitive enforcer, a half-blood demon, heirs to a declining lineage of artisans, and mysterious descendants of the Pure Karma clan.
In despair, they gather glimmers of hope. While resisting the oppressive order of the “Heavenly Punishment Palace,” they seek the shocking ancient secret behind the truth that “spiritual energy is poisonous.” Lu Chen must choose: should he go with the flow and eke out a wretched existence in this decaying system? Or should he become a torch and ignite the “seed of world-purifying flame” that will cleanse this corrupt world, even if the price is burning himself to ashes and overturning the entire era of cultivation on which civilization depends?
This is a journey of cultivation that draws strength from poison, a legend about rebuilding order in the depths of despair. From mine slave to purifier of the world, from mortal existence to ascension, he will carve out an unprecedented path in a world rotten to its core.
