The story takes place at the end of the "Xuan Qiong Era" - a world of Xianxia where the way of heaven is declining and the way of painting is withering. Yan Zhenben is a top contemporary ancient painting restorer. When he was mounting an unmarked ancient painting "Crane Crane in the Clouds", the crane in the painting flew out of the silk, and its claws fell on the shoulders, leaving a cinnabar-like crane mark. From then on, all the creatures he painted were able to leave the paper for three quarters of an hour: a messenger dove carries a secret edict through the clouds, a black tiger splits the mountain and becomes a war horse, a golden-scaled carp jumps over the dragon gate and transforms into a dragon... As a mortal, he climbed to the top of the painting master, but when he traced the origin of ancient paintings, he discovered the truth: that painting was actually a self-portrait painted by his previous life - the celestial painting saint "Yun Qiaozi" who was deprived of his godhood and relegated to reincarnation. The core conflict is that the heaven wants to erase the memory of his reincarnation in order to regain the authority of the painting saint. Yan Zhen must, under the double pressure of intensified spiritual backlash (every living creature's existence exceeds the time limit, his own essence and blood will be burned) and the pursuit of heaven's punishment, refining the "All Things Shaping Art", retrieving the sealed origin of the painting saint, and completing self-rectification and recasting the path.
