Lin Mo is known throughout Qingyun City as a good-for-nothing. Born without soul power, he has to climb sheer cliffs with his bare hands to gather herbs and keep his younger sister alive, for she is afflicted with a deadly poison. That is, until one night, when he broke into the family’s forbidden grounds and found a young beast imprisoned at the end of nine black iron chains. In exchange for half his lifespan, he made a pact with the ferocious beast sealed by the Heavenly Dao and named it Devour Heaven.
The moment the pact was complete, a mark of heavenly punishment was branded between his brows. Only then did he learn that he was no good-for-nothing, but an “Outlier” personally marked by the Heavenly Stele, an existence whose very being was an act of defiance. From that moment on, every powerful being in the world became his enemy.
Even more brutal truths soon followed: his sister’s poison was a trap set by the Heavenly Stele to erase him, while his master’s sacrifice and his companions’ dispersal all pointed to the golden pillar of light that pierced heaven and earth.
“If the Heavenly Dao will not tolerate me, then I will devour the heavens.”
From Qingyun City to the sacred city of Tianshu, he will make pacts with spirit beasts rejected by the rules and gather companions crushed by the established order. Before the “Day of Annihilation,” which comes once every five hundred years, he will launch an assault on the golden pillar of light that has imprisoned the Cangxuan Realm for five entire epochs.
Yet when he finally stands before the Heavenly Stele, a pair of deep purple eyes opens inside a humanoid cocoon that is splitting apart in its depths. A voice from thirty thousand years ago pierces through the soul mark and rings out in his mind:
“You’ve finally come. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”
