Core Premise
Black Mama, the foremost Earth Immortal of the Northeast, is the revered ancestral sanctuary of the Eight Treasures Cloudlight Cave on Nine-Topped Iron Cha Mountain. She is also a divine fragment of Li Shan Old Mother, sent to save the suffering. Ten thousand years ago, she went to war with the Five Great Families of the Immortal Realm to protect the laws of cause and effect. Her spirit bones were divided and sealed away, while what remained of her soul wandered the mortal world for ten thousand years.
In 2024, she is reincarnated as a baby girl abandoned at a Taoist temple. Her name is Shen Mo. At twenty-seven, she is an antique restorer, with a black lotus birthmark on her left palm.
She doesn't know who she is. But the Hu family has waited ten thousand years for her. The Five Great Families have feared her for just as long. And the restless spirits of the mortal world, with nowhere to turn for justice, have never forgotten her name.
This World
The Five Great Families, Xuanyuan, Donghua, Zhurong, Gonggong, and Xuantian, have ruled the mortal world for three hundred years. They control the Immortal Realm's authority over the mortal world and manipulate the ledger of life and death in the Underworld, turning the mortal world into a hunting ground for harvesting the power of faith. Beneath every skyscraper lies a soul-suppressing urn. Deep within every mine lurks a furnace of hellfire. Behind every substitute doll is the face of someone whose skin was taken while they were still alive.
The four great immortal clans of Hu, Huang, Chang, and Mang have been divided for ten thousand years. The Hu family steadfastly follows Black Mama; the Huang family is consumed by infighting; the Chang family defected to the Five Families; and the Mang family stands by and does nothing. Seven of the Underworld's Ten Halls of Yama have been infiltrated. The Bridge of Hel is jammed every day, and after watching a million years of suffering, Meng Po can bear it no longer.
And then there is the Heavenly Court: as long as the power of faith arrives on time, they turn a blind eye, until someone tampers with their supply chain.
