Xie Jingsheng, a herb-gathering girl from Jiangnan, is lured into the ghost realm by her brother-in-law, who uses his life soul as bait, all to save her older sister, Shen Wenyao. There she learns that she has stepped into a deadly plot spanning a thousand years. She is the reincarnation of the ancient goddess Fenyin, burdened with twin baleful destinies, while Huo Youming, master of the ghost realm’s Tenth Hall, is the ancient water god Xuanying, who has waited a thousand years for her.
A thousand years ago, the sun god Haoyan used a marriage contract as a curse and set up thirteen soul lamps as a sacrifice, condemning Fenyin to endless cycles of reincarnation. Now the thirteenth lamp has reached her sister. Within forty-nine days, Xie Jingsheng must gather the divine bone fragments Haoyan scattered across the Six Realms and burn the marriage contract with her own heart’s blood. From the trial grounds of the Ten Kings of Hell, to the time-space rift at the Upside-Down Temple, and finally to the creation’s end at the Abyss of Primordial Beginning, the gentle brother-in-law Pei Yanci plots revenge; the stern Judge Ji Ecang hides his private feelings; and Su Jianghe, a lost pearl of the divine realm, reconciles with her sister. Gu Xianchan, the death-omen crow, uses its crow’s eyes to pierce illusions, while Yinghuo, the last survivor of the dragon clan, burns the lamp wick to mend shattered souls.
Only when Xie Jingsheng stands before Haoyan with a bone flute in her hands does she understand the weight of the thirteenth name on the marriage contract. It is no curse, but the obsession of a god who made himself a laughingstock. They say hatred lasts longer than love? She will let the hearts of mortals and gods coexist, and play one final song on her sheng, so that every soul imprisoned by the marriage contract can return to the warmth of the mortal world.
