Everyone can awaken a personal puppet.
Blades, spears, swords, halberds, birds and beasts, gods, demons, immortals, and buddhas: the puppet you awaken reflects who you are.
At sixteen, Ye Zhao, a boy from a border town, summons a towering black puppet at his awakening ceremony.
It wears heavy armor and wields a greatsword, its eyes crimson as blood.
The elder presiding over the ceremony trembles and says, “I’ve... never seen a puppet like this.”
That day, everyone believes he is a heaven-sent prodigy.
Only Ye Zhao knows that awakening is no blessing. It is a curse.
Before his father dies, he tells him, “Your mother is still alive, in the Cold Palace of the Northern Zhao Imperial City.”
The lofty royal family has kept her imprisoned for thirty years.
Ye Zhao leaves the border town and steps into a chaotic age where puppets vie for supremacy.
He meets many people along the way:
A sword-wielding girl as cold as frost, whose origins are a mystery, yet who always appears when danger strikes;
A mischievous street orphan who calls him big brother and stands by him through life and death;
A mysterious woman in the Northern Zhao Imperial City who says she is his mother's disciple and is waiting for him;
And many others farther ahead: a witch from the Southern Frontier, a saintess from Xiqi, a flood dragon from the Eastern Sea...
Each of them crosses his path with a story of her own.
But Ye Zhao hasn't forgotten his father's words: the person who killed him is in the Northern Zhao Imperial City.
Three years later, Northern Zhao holds the Gathering of the World's Heroes.
Ye Zhao has only one goal: enter the imperial city, uncover the truth, and save his mother.
But he doesn't know that a shocking secret about his parentage lies hidden deep within that imposing imperial city.
And his personal puppet, “Xingtian,” once had a master:
A man from a thousand years ago who nearly united the entire continent.
