There is a moon at the bottom of the well, and frost beneath the moon.
Those struck by frost, do not look back.
Shen Mo transmigrated.
He landed in a vast world where immortals and mortals were cut off from one another, inhabiting the body of an orphan from a mountain village.
Here, cultivators stand high above the world, while mortals are no better than ants or pigs and dogs.
Here, some use people as sustenance and refine evil artifacts with the living.
And all he has is a scroll of black bamboo slips that drives anyone who reads it mad in their dreams.
The slips record forbidden knowledge known as “Cthulhu Mechanisms.”
Fueled by fear, powered by madness, with the souls of the living as its gears.
*
Then one night, a cultivator covered in blood fell from the sky.
Something alive writhed in her wounds.
The mastermind behind the major case of evil cultivators she was investigating turned out to be an elder of her own sect.
And she had fallen right beside the ancient, bottomless well at the entrance to the village.
*
Something at the bottom of the well was calling to him.
It said: Take my gear, and you'll have to do a job for me.
It said: Bring down the soul of the one who refines artifacts with “people.”
*
Standing at the edge of the well, Shen Mo gazed at the figure beneath the moonlight, cool and clear as frost and snow, and smiled faintly.
“Perfect.”
“I want to see for myself what that thing that feeds on people really is.”
*
Immortals are forbidden from associating with mortals.
But immortals don't know that some mortals are more dangerous than they are.
Like those who can borrow “madness” from the bottom of a well.
