At the crossroads of life at eighteen, they were people society had given up on completely.
Some had failed the college entrance exam and been branded failures for good; others had never even made it through the gates of middle school and were already written off as having no chance of success in life.
A closely guarded rumor became their desperate last hope: deep in the northern wilderness, hidden within a sacred mountain, stood a mysterious academy. It asked nothing about their past or their grades. They only had to pay an astronomical tuition fee to enroll directly, and upon graduation they would receive a prestigious university degree recognized nationwide.
The academy's location was a mystery, and parents were strictly forbidden from accompanying students. It seemed like a secret gamble meant only for the disillusioned.
But when they stepped through the mountain gates, full of hope, they discovered that the supposed shortcut to a better education was actually a savage prison cut off from the world.
In the dense forests of the mountains, wolves, jackals, tigers, and leopards lurked, and every step could mean life or death. Beneath the peaceful campus, the benevolent headmaster harbored ambitions vast enough to topple everything. Powerful families with tangled roots waited for their chance to take revenge, while profit-seeking merchants laid one deadly trap after another.
A group of teenagers who had just turned eighteen, rejected by society, were thrown by fate into the cruelest arena of all.
Awkward first stirrings of love quietly took root amid life-and-death struggles. Tests of wealth and human nature came one after another. A bottomless abyss lay ahead, and there was no retreat behind them.
Their only choice was to fight with their backs to the wall, tear a way out of the deadly traps, and turn the terrible hand they had been dealt into a legendary success of their own, despite the world's prejudice.
