Forty thousand years ago, the battle to seal the heavens reordered the world.
The Celestial Court rewrote the history of the ages, while the Jin clan bore the name of traitors for generations, buried amid the crumbling ruins of the ancient battlefield in the Western Wastes.
The people of the Nine Domains are trapped in the shackles of the Heavenly Dao. They pay tribute in incense, their fates already decided, all of them livestock raised by the Celestial Court. Everyone believes the laws of heaven are impartial, yet no one knows that the order hanging high above the nine heavens is one enormous deception.
In a borderland prison mine of black stone, the youth Shen Jin survives in endless mud.
He watches his loved ones be seized by the Heavenly Dao and vanish without a sound. At the brink of despair, he obtains the forbidden ancient scripture, the Reverse Ember Canon.
While the world cultivates spiritual energy, follows the Heavenly Dao, and pursues immortality, he alone forges his path from the souls of the dead and turns their dying words into runes, defying fate.
He is patient as the abyss, calculating every move in the game of human hearts, and threading his way among sects, princely estates, the Celestial Court, and the Ruinous Sea.
Step by step, he strips away layer upon layer of disguise, drawing ever closer to the primordial truth that was erased.
The sleeping souls of emperors begin to stir. The sealed Gate of Heaven trembles. Fragments of true names scattered throughout the world begin to echo.
The old heaven is rotten, and the dark tide of the Return to the Ruins is about to rise.
When every lie crumbles, when the secrets of the Nine Emperors come to light...
He is the greatest rebel in the world, and the only path to survival for the Nine Domains.
The truth of the ancient Heavenly Dao remains unknown, and the fate of all creation hangs on one person.
