The Tribulation Ledger

The Shen Clan was once the third-ranked immortal cultivation family in the Kunxu Realm. Three hundred years ago, an ancestor sought eternal life by performing a forbidden ritual at the cost of the clan's fortune, tainting all his descendants with the “Karmic Debt of Stealing from Heaven.” The Heavenly Dao laid a curse upon them: the higher a Shen cultivator's cultivation, the shorter their lifespan. After death, they could not enter reincarnation, and their souls would be imprisoned beneath the clan grounds forever. For three hundred years, six generations of the Shen Clan cultivated, broke through, died suddenly, and had their souls bound. The clan fell from an immortal sect to a family of rogue cultivators, then further to a village of ordinary folk. Now, only seven members remain.

The protagonist, Shen Du, is the only ordinary member of the Shen Clan's seventh generation, born without a spiritual root. By chance, he leafs through a golden ledger in a forbidden area of the ancestral hall and awakens the “Tribulation Ledger,” which records every karmic debt the Shen Clan has owed the Heavenly Dao over the past three hundred years. Each debt repaid frees one clan member from the curse. But each page he opens also awakens the imprisoned souls of the ancestors a little more, threatening to drag the entire clan to its doom.