The great bell that guarded Biluo Peak had not rung in three hundred years.
That night, it rang seven times, and a blood moon hung in the sky. Shen Muci, an outer disciple, awoke from an assassination attempt with a crescent-shaped scar in his palm. It wasn't a wound, but a sealed lamp.
The Nightwatch Lamp.
Legend says that in ancient times, a group of people stood watch at the boundary between the mortal world and the netherworld, using their bodies as lamp wicks and their souls as flames. After the Three Realms split apart, the Night Watchers died out one after another, and the last lamp fell silent. Until tonight, when it chose him.
But the one chosen by the lamp also carried a crack within him, one that connected the mortal world to the netherworld. That crack had been left by his father, who was now locked in the deepest secret chamber of Xuantian Sect, waiting for him to come and kill him.
"Kill me, and only then can you live a clean life."
He brought down his sword. From that moment on, there was no lamp in his body, but a fire in his heart.
Xuantian Sect would not tolerate him. Lu Yuanting, the master of Lingxiao Peak, pursued him, while undercurrents stirred among the thirty-six grotto-heavens of the Southern Frontier. And the ink-black sea in the sky, known as the "Sea of Qingming Hanging Upside Down," was sinking lower with every passing day. Beneath it stood a door built from bones, with a line of words carved upon it:
Those who enter cannot leave. Those who leave are no longer human.
Of the thirteen lineages of Night Watchers, only one remained to keep the lamp burning. Through one endless night after another, Shen Muci had to learn how to stand watch. Not to save his own life, but to find the answer to one question before the lamp went out:
Who was he, really?
