Shen Lang, a chemistry prodigy, transmigrates into a cultivation world and takes over the body of a wastrel crippled by poison. This world venerates cultivation through spiritual roots and regards poison arts as demonic heresy. He, however, has no spiritual root.
But his mind holds an entire edifice of modern chemistry.
Others cultivate with spiritual energy; he cultivates through poison refinement. Minute doses of toxins stimulate the meridians, redox reactions replace the circulation of spiritual energy, the nine stages of poison refinement correspond to the nine great cultivation realms, and the color of his poisoned blood changes with his cultivation.
Starting with rooting out traitors among the collateral branch, he goes on to uncover the truth about the Pill Alliance refining pills with living people, then faces off against the continent’s foremost expert, the Azure Sun Heavenly Venerable, on the ancient battlefield of the Northern Wastes. He wields no sword, only thirty-two kinds of compound poison. Neurotoxins counter sword speed; radioactive toxins disrupt spiritual energy pathways. He doesn’t fight by sword technique, but by the periodic table.
Years later, someone asks him, “Did you enter the Dao through poison?”
He replies, “That was the old me. I’m just Shen Lang now.”
