The Last Embers of the Heavenly Register

In Qingyun City, Northern Wilderness, everyone is registered at birth, and after death their souls return to the Heavenly River. Ye Chen, however, has lived for seventeen years, only to be judged by the Registry Stele at the Vein-Setting Ceremony as having no registry.

In fifteen days, he will be expelled from the Ye family and stripped of his identity. He will not even be able to pass through the city gates. Then, on that very day, the mine at North Mountain suddenly collapses. Thirty-seven bodies are brought out of the mine, but not one bears a trace of a soul. Nineteen miners are unaccounted for, yet the City Lord's residence announces that only nine people died and seals off the mountain overnight.

While keeping watch over the bodies, Ye Chen's little black furnace, which he has worn for seventeen years, awakens for the first time. He can see the lingering obsessions of the dead and hear their final wishes, buried in darkness. If he fulfills a dead person's last wish, he may receive a wisp of willing ember. But the black furnace never grants power for free.

Once the embers are spent, if he continues to kindle the soulflame, what burns away will be Ye Chen's own memories. One use might make him forget the taste of a meal. The next might make him forget the face of someone dear, or even why he fights.

To save the people still breathing beneath the mine, Ye Chen enters the deep shaft everyone has declared devoid of survivors, only to discover that this disaster is just the tip of the iceberg. Sects forge weapons with souls, imperial clans prolong their lives with souls, and the lofty Heavenly Order makes all living beings across the heavens pay soul taxes with their memories and next lives.

If this so-called peace requires someone to have their name erased, and this so-called Heavenly Way allows all living beings to be nothing more than fuel, then this sky deserves to be burned anew.

He never wanted to become the master who commands ten thousand souls. He wants every soul to be master of itself.