Chen Mo thought this was all his life would ever be: thirty-eight years old, a rare-book restorer at the city library, twenty-three years left on his mortgage. His life was like an old book laid out to dry, every page carrying the dusty certainty of the past. Then, one night before dawn, he peeled seven icy pieces of sheepskin from a bloodstained book from the late Ming dynasty. The basement lights went out, and something crawled out from behind the Republican-era newspaper shelves, its scales scraping the floor with a sound like a dull knife grinding against bone. It said, "Give me the Heavenly Secrets inheritance." Holding a craft knife, his back against the workbench, Chen Mo followed the breathing technique shown on the sheepskin for the first time as a deluge from the fire sprinklers poured down. Then he saw a golden glimmer spread across his hands. This wasn't cultivation. It was a manhunt that had lasted three hundred years. And he, an ordinary man who couldn't even bear to read his own medical checkup results, had become the only living key to an ancient legacy. As spiritual qi quietly revived across the world and ancient Daoist traditions emerged one after another, Chen Mo discovered that the twisted movements on the sheepskin scroll did not lead to immortality. They led to a war that ordinary people had to win. Because those who lose won't even leave a corpse behind.
