According to clan rules, Shen Qingxuan had to enter the mortal world for three years of training when he turned eighteen. But in the past three hundred years, that rule had only ever been applied to him. On the first day of his exile, he propped up a cardboard sign in front of a fortune-telling stall that read, “Scientific mysticism, fair to all, young and old,” and ran into his childhood friend Lu Qingci. “Qingxuan, your big brother’s here to make sure you keep up with your cultivation.” Shen Qingxuan saw the bottomless, blood-red karmic chain in Lu Qingci’s fate, then noticed the countdown to their deaths appearing in his own palm, perfectly synchronized with Lu Qingci’s. He suddenly understood: from the very beginning, this exile in the mortal world had been a carefully laid trap meant to kill him.
At first, all they did was help passersby catch spirits. Then they picked up a tabby cat demon turned into a puppet, a Samoyed demon raised by a Taoist priest, and a husky demon whom Lu Qingci had once pulled back from the gates of death as a child. Shen Qingxuan finally realized that every creature they took in was a “vessel of destiny” abandoned by the various powers. Every clue pointed to the game being played behind the scenes, with the mortal world as the board and all living beings as its pieces.
As the formation shattered, Lu Qingci, who was always smiling as he shielded the others, stumbled backward, coughing blood. The chains of fate snapped one by one. “I’m sorry, Qingxuan… The clan rule was fake… The exile was a conspiracy… Run…”
Lu Haha, who was always grinning foolishly, had his body completely destroyed. “Everyone, I’m sorry. This is as far as I can go.”
Standing in the middle of the ruins, Shen Qingxuan looked toward the Heavenly Dao’s eye beyond the sky screen, which had watched the mortal world for three thousand years, and suddenly smiled. Behind him, the phantom of a nine-tailed fox devoured the sky and earth.
“You stole my pets? Altered my fate? Used my brother’s blood to pave your road to heaven?”
“Come on, let me teach you…”
“What it means to be crushed by a truly Heavenly Dao-level algorithm.”
