Since the divine war of the Second Era, the bridge connecting the "True" and the "Myriad Phenomena" has been cracked. Six eras have passed, and the cracks have spread from the Nine Heavens to the mortal world. Spiritual energy is fading, karma is leaking away, and fate is in disarray. A great calamity is brewing at the end of the Seventh Era.
Shen Ye is an unremarkable young rogue cultivator from the wastelands of the Western Desert. He's fifteen, hasn't entered the Qi-Nourishing Realm, and his master has just died. All he has left is a black fragment he picked up in a meteorite crater. The fragment cannot speak, but when danger approaches, it burns against his chest. It teaches him how to avoid danger and seize opportunities, while leading him step by step toward the truth.
To survive, he leaves the Western Desert with Jiang Chen, a disciple of the Starwatch Sect, and takes part in its once-every-three-years public trial. He thinks his goal is to join the sect, learn cultivation techniques, and earn a chance to stay alive. But on his first night in the sect, he sees something in the Milky Way that no one else can: black lines stretching across the sea of stars, the widest one running between the Pleiades and the Hyades.
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