Behold the Sea of Suffering

“Other people cultivate immortality by drawing on spiritual energy. I cultivate immortality by devouring baleful energy. What they flee from is the very source of my power.”

The Sea of Bitterness is overflowing, and its foul miasma corrodes heaven and earth. Chen Zhu’s Dao foundation was tainted, but that made him the only person in the world capable of controlling the Sea of Bitterness’s miasma, a vessel upon its waters. The power within him is both a calamity and a cure: he can devour the baleful energy of heaven and earth and make it his own, and he can also draw away the suffering of cultivators who have gone mad from cultivation or been consumed by miasma, eliminating the root of their affliction.

Yet this ability has made him a secret weapon in the eyes of the sects, one who is neither wholly righteous nor wholly evil. He is granted the empty title of Celestial Patrol Envoy and sent west, to the source of the cataclysm. The mission is ostensibly an investigation, but in truth it is a merciless test: to decide whether the world that once abandoned him is still worth saving.

Along the westward road, the music of Blackwind Mountain, the lingering resonance of Goldenstone Valley, the Baleful-Energy Suppression Altar beneath the Silent Spirit Sea of Sand... Every clue points to the ancient taboo of Guixu. There, Chen Zhu discovers that the truth behind his loved one's shattered Dao foundation and the broken strings of an ancient zither are both inextricably linked to an ultimate crisis sweeping across heaven and earth.

When the orthodox sects regard him as a cancer and the mastermind behind the scenes lays a deadly trap, how will Chen Zhu use this tainted body to carry out the work of suppressing hell? Will he drift with the tide, or defy heaven and seek the Dao, fighting for a sliver of hope for all living beings?

A boat on the foul sea, seeking the Dao against heaven.