The Storm Is Coming, and the Tower Is Filled with Wind

As the Tang dynasty wanes, in the era of Emperors Yizong and Xizong, eunuchs seize power and regional warlords carve up the land. Beside the Grand Canal, the vast city known as the Imperial Capital sings and celebrates night after night, while hiding deadly dangers. Beneath the Jinwu Bridge, a faceless woman's corpse suddenly appears, its body branded with the secret designs of the former dynasty's Xuanji. On the night a Western Regions caravan presents its tribute, a precious glass casket is found to contain a blood-written message. Anyone who touches the Xuanji Diagram either goes mad or dies, yet the martial world and the imperial court alike vie to uncover its secrets, believing it can topple the dynasty and shatter the dragon veins.

The fallen noblewoman Shangguan Luoyan slips into the perilous city to search for her missing brother. Xiao Chenyu, a demoted judicial official, bears the burden of an old case and keeps to the common streets. Borderland hero Huo Wenqing wields twin blades to guard the way of justice through the night. The three encounter bizarre cases along the post roads, deadly traps on painted pleasure boats, poison at grand banquets, and formations in desolate tombs. Yet with every mystery they solve, they glimpse the shadow of the Xuanji: mechanisms hidden in golden hairpins, star charts concealed in Hu dances, repeating crossbows aimed at celestial signs. All point toward the secrets left behind by Empress Wu's era.

The Candle Dragon in the imperial city is about to awaken, and monsters stir across the land. In just ten days, the protagonists must defy the heavens, overcome the darkness in people's hearts, and fight the forces of the netherworld to stop the "Xuanji Opening the Heavens" ritual. But the truth is like a tower: treasure is only the surface, bloodlines lie beneath, and at its very foundation lurks a century-old scheme by a giant of the Mohist school... In the end, blood rain drenches the dying lamp. Though the calamity is sealed for now, the Tang vessel has sprung a leak. And where the river of stars hangs upside down, the eerie laughter of reincarnation in ages to come can still be heard.