At the final battle at the Burial Mounds, Wei Wuxian fakes his death by self-detonating. Lan Wangji charges into the black fog and plunges with him into a bronze fissure deep underground. The two transmigrate from a cultivation world to Changsha in 1920. Their spiritual powers are gone, and Bichen and Chenqing shatter into two bronze fragments. They hammer away for their lives in a blacksmith’s shop, but an ambush by fleeing soldiers brings them into contact with Zhang Qishan of the Jiumen, drawing them into a sealing mystery that spans thousands of years.
Deep in the mines lies a seven-coffin formation that binds a god; beneath the Qinling Mountains stands a bronze sacred tree; under the rice paddies of Chenzhou lies an ancient tomb with an empty coffin; beneath the South China Sea is a bronze gate. From Changsha to Changbai Mountain, from the Republican era to modern times, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian spend a full hundred years pursuing the truth. In 1950, Wei Wuxian walks through the bronze gate and is trapped inside, holding on alone for decades. Lan Wangji waits outside for twenty years, traveling far and wide and asking the spirits for answers more than 3,900 times, all to find the key that will open the gate.
“Every promise of immortality in this world is an illusion. You alone are the place I return to after a century of loneliness.”
