The Heavenly Dao reboots, and the apocalypse descends. At the Awakening Platform, ordinary people can activate one of three sequences: Thunder, Frost, or Daoist. The first two are gifts from heaven; the last is taboo.
Lu Chen is the eighth person to step onto the platform. Of the first seven, three died, one went mad, and three were taken away by the military. He is the only Daoist-sequence wielder to survive.
But he soon understands that survival is no stroke of luck. It is a mark.
Every time he summons Yin soldiers, he loses a memory. Every blood talisman he draws burns away years of his life. The stronger he gets, the less human he becomes, until he discovers that he is not a chosen warrior, but the 108th split soul of the Northern Emperor. The previous 107 all perished, their souls scattered.
The military hunts him, and the Daoist sects put a bounty on his head. Beneath the Arctic ice, a faceless figure with his exact appearance waits for him to take his place.
At last, he reaches the end and faces a choice: become a new god and reboot the world, or abandon all his power and, in the body of an ordinary man, write an unprecedented talisman: the character for “human”?
The Heavenly Dao has rebooted, and the Northern Emperor is dead. Humanity, however, has only just begun to rise.
