On the Cangxuan Continent, sects abound, sacred lands float in the sky, and empires stretch for thousands of miles.
The first step of cultivation in this world isn't drawing qi into the body, but making a pact: one forms a life contract with the Heavenly Dao and borrows the first wisp of its power. With every breakthrough, one borrows a little more.
People believe this is a blessing.
The truth is, it's a debt.
Every sixty years, the Heavenly Dao collects, in an event known as Heavenly Calamity. The sky splits open, and cultivators who have reached great heights fall in droves, their flesh and souls claimed by the heavens. For thousands of years, no one has dared to seek the summit. Not because they can't break through, but because they don't dare. All the fearsome old monsters are desperately suppressing their cultivation, waiting out their days in hiding.
No one knows that in ancient times, there was a clan that cultivated outside the Heavenly Dao, made no life contracts, and specialized in collecting debts from people and demanding their lives from the heavens.
They were called the Life Collectors.
A thousand years ago, the Heavenly Dao punished their clan, and a hundred sects joined forces to slaughter them. Their bloodline was extinguished.
Until, at the Gu family's Heaven-Worshipping Ceremony in a border city, the young man with a severed meridian, whom his entire clan had pushed onto the altar as a sacrifice, opened his eyes as torches lit up the night sky.
