The Record of Severed Threads

Three hundred and sixty paths of destiny hang over every soul in the Nine Provinces.

Ancient fate masters laid a grand array, using the fortune of the common people as fuel to raise a select few prodigies as their banners. For a thousand years, rank and station have been fixed, and life and death have followed their allotted course. No one could escape this web of fate.

The Shen family of the Duke of Zhenguo's household has borne a curse of black threads for generations. The legitimate sons rarely live past thirty.

In Shen Yan's generation, after a bout of high fever, a fragment of the ruler passed down through his family fused with his soul. He saw the threads of fate entwining the world, and the future awaiting his family: in three years, they would all be executed.

A prodigy of the Historian's Way forged history with his brush, erasing the traces of those who defied fate;

A prodigy of the Artisan's Way seized whatever he wanted, stealing a thousand years of Mohist teachings;

A prodigy of the Canal Transport Way grew rich through corruption and harmed the people, paving his official career with innocent corpses;

A prodigy of the Armament Way seized the sword-making records and wiped out a family, reducing its heirs to enslaved swordsmiths;

A prodigy of the Music Way devoured souls with sound, earning fame by harvesting the people's fortune.

Five prodigies, five golden threads, five lives whose paths had been set in stone.

Wielding a ruler, Shen Yan crosses the Nine Provinces, from the secret archives of the capital to the Mohist mechanical city in Lu, from the Huainan canals to the sword sects of Shu, and onward to the misty rain of Jiangnan.

He cuts through the shackles binding others, while bearing the backlash himself.

A female historian records the truth with her brush and joins him in seeking secrets buried for a thousand years;

A Mohist woman commands the mechanisms and helps him unravel the mysteries at the array's heart;

An upright canal official joins him in putting waterways and people's livelihoods in order;

A swordsmith tempers steel and sharpens its edge, forging him a divine weapon that can sever threads;

A musician plucks her strings and sings, using her melodies to disrupt the laws of the cosmos.

When the array's pieces fall into place and the underground palace opens, he will wield this ruler

and cut apart the web of fate that has hung over the world for a thousand years,

returning to heaven and earth a world where all beings stand equal and determine their own destinies.