Clouds and Waters Drift On

The three schools of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism jointly rule the world. A grand array laid across the heavens has drained five hundred years of spiritual energy from the future, propping up an unprecedented golden age. The spiritual ley lines are abundant, prodigies emerge in droves, and everyone believes that the cultivation civilization is at the height of its prosperity.

But the truth is that the cultivation system is collapsing.

Cultivators enter the Dao through the seven emotions: joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, loathing, and desire. The higher their realm, the less human they become. After reaching Nascent Soul, they grow taciturn; after reaching Deity Transformation, they rarely smile. By the time they reach Body Integration and Great Ascension, they are almost no different from stones. The Sages of the three schools know the truth, but none dares to stop. The grand array is a desperate, short-term fix: the moment it ceases, the entire cultivation world will be drained of spiritual energy and doomed to calamity.

Just then, in the ruins left by a failed ascension, Perfected Yuheng finds a baby who cannot cry.

The baby is named Yu Xinlu. He was born without the seven emotions. He isn't numb; he is truly empty. Yet every breath he takes nourishes the earth's spiritual veins. The strokes of his casual doodles echo the secrets of heaven. Wherever he steps, dead grass springs back to life and spiritual springs gush forth.

The Formless Dao Body.

An anomaly capable of reversing the world's decline, and a pawn coveted by all three schools.

The Daoists want to claim him as a vessel, the Buddhists want to guide him toward enlightenment, and the Confucians want to refine him into a Sage.

Perfected Yuheng, however, plants seven counterfeit seeds of emotion in him using a heretical method, and sets him on a path no one has ever taken: to face the tribulation of a Sage in a mortal body.

Yu Xinlu doesn't understand what “emotion” is, but one day he will have to choose:

Will he become a sacrifice in the power struggle among the three schools, or shatter with his own hands this old world that has no need for humanity?

This is a cultivation story about what it means to be “human.”