The Songbook of the Nine Heavens

I, Lin Feng, am the most hopeless odd-job disciple of the Qinglan Sect. My spiritual roots are damaged, and the path to the Great Dao is closed to me.

Then I crushed an ancient stele underfoot in the back mountains and discovered that I could read the long-lost celestial script of antiquity. Its inscription recorded a horrifying truth: so-called ascension was nothing but a bloody scam to feed monsters from beyond the heavens.

I was drawn into a conspiracy spanning thirty thousand years. The World-Devouring Seed hangs high above the heavens, using ascension as bait to devour the souls and essence of cultivators across the myriad worlds. The immortal maiden of the Su family has been ordered to kill me, the “Knot-Cutter,” while a demonic enchantress is intensely interested in the secret I carry. And then there's Wang Duobao, a self-proclaimed treasure-hunting immortal fox who switches effortlessly between haggling and running for his life.

To survive, I practice the Starwatcher's legacy, the Art of Defying Fate: steal the World-Devouring power, refine an undying flame, and use myself as bait to fish out flaws in the Heavenly Dao. Every step is taken under the World-Devouring Seed's watchful gaze, and every breakthrough brings an even more perilous pursuit.

The immortal sects are prisons, and ascension is a lie. The flame in my hands will burn this man-eating cycle to ashes.

This is a suspenseful adventure in search of truth amid the ruins of lies, and a story of defying fate by throwing a punch at destiny itself. Those who travel with me: a cool, reserved immortal maiden burdened with a mission, a demonic enchantress who is neither wholly good nor evil, and a fox who is always counting the cost.

The truth lies dormant in the next ruin, and the hunters have already spread across the...