In the eighteenth year of the Yongle reign, deep in the Qinling Mountains, stood an unnamed Daoist temple.
The young Daoist Mei Song lay bundled in his quilt, listening to the winter wind howl, with no idea he had only six months left to live.
A pure Yang fate and a pure Yang body made him extraordinarily intelligent, with senses sharper than anyone else's. The price was that he would not live past twenty.
He had planned to wait quietly for death, but fate had other ideas.
One freezing night in the first lunar month, two neighbors kicked down his door and slit his master's throat.
From then on, a sickly young man who couldn't hurt a fly was swept into an earth-shaking game of intrigue: the Heavenly Secrets Box.
Legend says it is the fruit of a divine tree deep in the Qinling Mountains, which bears fruit only once every twenty years. Zhang Liang obtained one and helped Liu Bang found the Han Dynasty; Zhuge Liang knew of it but never got one, and could only divide the realm into three; Liu Bowen acquired one and helped Zhu Yuanzhang establish the Ming Dynasty.
Whoever obtains the Heavenly Secrets Box obtains the realm.
To get it, one must first gather four keys and open a secret chamber to retrieve the Heavenly Secrets Token. Then one must survive the box-snatching game laid out by the Heavenly Secrets Sect to earn the right to enter Immortal Valley.
Every step is a life-or-death gamble; every trial is a battle of wits and will.
Worse still, Mei Song is far from the only one after the Heavenly Secrets Box.
A commandery princess from Prince Qin's manor, a thousand-household commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, Mongol remnants on the grasslands, assassin clans in the martial world, the crown prince and powerful eunuchs at court: each has an agenda and a hidden killing move, and all want to be the last one standing.
Mei Song has no martial arts, no connections, and no money.
All he has is a mind more useful than anyone else's, and a tongue sharper than a blade.
Others make their arguments with fists. He sets traps with logic.
“You say I won't live to see twenty? Then I'll turn the whole world of Heavenly Secrets upside down before I die.”
