Crossing the Abyss

In the world of Balance, all things draw their source-breath from joy and sorrow. Cultivation means borrowing, and every loan incurs a debt of balance.

I am Shen Yan, an orphan of the disaster that struck Qingya Town. As a boy, I watched my friend die in a crevasse with my own eyes, and a burn scar was branded onto my arm, never to fade. When the sect tested my roots, they deemed my aptitude poor.

Everyone thought I was merely an unknown cultivator willing to endure hardship. No one knew that a veil of source-breath obscured my Dao foundation, concealing a body aligned with balance, a kind unseen once in ten thousand years.

Pursuit, sacrifice, the Blood Abyss. In the battle at the Veiled Abyss, my friend burned away his Dao foundation. His soul shattered bit by bit, and with his death, he carved open a path to life for me.

The veil tore apart, and my soul was flayed by a thousand knives. Amid unbearable agony, an unrivaled Dao body emerged. From then on, the source-breath stretching a thousand miles around me resonated with my every thought. But the price was that every step in my cultivation burdened me with three times the debt of an ordinary person.

Beneath the glory of genius, the dead linger like shadows.

I refused to pass my debts on to others. I would not cast my suffering onto the people. On the day I faced the Trial of Balance, countless phantoms of the dead stood amid the thunder. A He and Su Wan gazed quietly at me through the mist of tribulation.

I put my soul up as collateral and repaid every debt of balance, ascending to godhood.

But becoming a god was no release.

Upon the divine throne, I had no right to forget pain. It took me seven more days to understand: the so-called God of Balance was nothing more than a solitary shadow, forever bearing the memories of the dead and watching over the balance of the world.