The Xu Ruins' Talisman Keeper

The Qingyin Continent has endured seventeen cycles of tribulation, its flames never extinguished.

This world has its own unchanging laws of cultivation, known as Inscribing the Ruins, Engraving the Chapters, Tempering the Bones, and Proving the Ruins.

But in this age, no one is willing to follow the ancient path anymore.

The usurpation of the Dao, led by Xie Linyuan, has become the prevailing way. Cultivators skip the long road of laying foundations and establishing chapters, siphoning off scattered Dao power to rapidly advance their cultivation. Sects flock to it, and all beings scramble to take this shortcut.

People laugh at the old path as slow and foolish, saying that even after a thousand years, one might not pass the trial of Tempering the Bones. Yet they cannot see that beneath these hastily cultivated Dao roots, the rot of an impending era-spanning collapse has already taken hold.

Su Heng, bearing a damaged body of the Ruins Dao, emerges from the dust-covered wilds.

His spirit palace is naturally incomplete, making it many times harder for him than for ordinary people to lay the foundation of Inscribing the Ruins. Yet he is one of the very few in this age willing to fully walk the four precepts of the ancient path.

As the tide of the age turns toward the new, rapid methods, he swims against the current.

Not to slay demons or purge evil, nor to vie for supremacy or seize treasures.

He wagers against the prevailing force of the world, fighting for a sliver of hope that the ancient path, on the verge of vanishing, might survive.

Upon the Proving the Ruins Platform, tribulation fire burns the Dao. The fate of the two Dao traditions will be decided by their own hands.