The spiritual leyline beneath the Imperial Capital is running dry, and the seal is on the verge of breaking.
National Preceptor Zhang Daoheng of the Xuan Si Kingdom proposes “sustaining the leyline with a life”: choose a spirit guardian to give their life and fill the breach.
Everyone looks to Gu Heng. The legitimate heir of the Gu family and the Imperial Capital’s last line of defense, he isn’t the best choice. He’s the only choice.
He doesn’t refuse. He only says, “There’s another way.”
No one believes him. With his right hand crippled, most of his mental strength gone, and even his spirit-guarding robe slipping off him, how can he possibly fight the leyline’s collapse?
Then Xie Linyuan returns.
He comes back from the southern frontier, from three years in exile, from the place everyone thought he had died. When he walks through the gates of the Gu residence, he still carries the miasma of the southern frontier and old wounds, but his eyes are bright. They say, “I’m back. Leave the rest to me.”
He says, “I can match your frequency.”
One spirit guardian with a crippled right hand, one general with no way back. Amid the ruins of the leyline, step by step, they make the path no one believed in real. The spiritual leyline beneath the Imperial Capital is running dry, and the seal is on the verge of breaking.
