Defying Fate

When he was sixteen, his younger sister died from a cultivator’s casual strike.

Lin Yuan knelt in a pool of blood, unable to buy the candied hawthorns she wanted. In that moment, he understood: in the eyes of mortals, cultivators were gods. Their fate had already been written, and resistance was futile.

Later, on his deathbed, his master told him: You are the Dao Seed. The Dao Seed of the Twelfth Era.

The Dao Seed is the sacrifice chosen by the Heavenly Dao. It grants you fortune and lets you grow, only to sacrifice you at the end of the era in exchange for the world’s survival. This isn’t favor. It’s raising a venomous creature in a jar: fatten it up, then kill it.

But the Heavenly Dao doesn’t know that this “sacrifice” it chose carries the bloodline of an ancient god within him, an anomaly that even the secrets of heaven cannot fathom. Every bit of fortune it grants only nourishes the variable that will one day turn against it.

From mortal to master of fate, he must pass through twelve realms of destiny and fight fate to the death twelve times. Every breakthrough comes at a cost: his master dies, his brothers die, and the person he loves most burns away her lifeline for him, leaving her with only fifty years to live.

He asks himself: Is it worth it?

Ten thousand years later, standing at the peak of destiny, he hears the Heavenly Dao whisper: “Become the master of fate, and you will be the god of the new era.”

He smiles.

He thinks of his sister’s candied hawthorns, and of everyone who died for him.

“I don’t want to rule over fate.”

“I want everyone to be able to choose their own destiny.”