Tales of the Huai and Si

The Great Sheng Dynasty had enjoyed a long peace, but its accumulated ills were festering. To the north, the Kingdom of Shuo watched like a tiger poised to pounce; to the west, the Rong and Di tribes raided the borders. Factional strife tore the court apart, while local magnates grew ever more powerful. Huai Prefecture was the crossroads of five provinces, the key to the royal capital, and the central hub of the dragon energy flowing through the Nine Provinces.

Shen Du came from the lowest ranks of Huai Prefecture's canal transport trade. Using the study of natural principles, he joined the Bureau of Arcane Affairs, where he handled supernatural cases across the realm alongside Wu, an old craftsman, and Lin Wan, a female court historian. Starting with the demon bat case at Huai Prefecture's Black Tortoise Temple, he came across Ling Yunzi's notes and glimpsed the secret of the dragon lairs. A century earlier, the geomancer Ling Yunzi had been ordered to survey the dragon lairs of the Nine Provinces and install dragon-guiding stakes to channel the earth's energy and secure the dynasty's fortune. But Dai Xuansu, head of the Celestial Secrets Academy, secretly turned the stakes into a dragon-trapping formation, intending to lock away the dragon energy and use arcane arts to force the declining dynasty to endure.

Taking advantage of Great Sheng's troubles at home and abroad, Northern Shuo launched a massive invasion to the south. Amid the flames of war, dragon energy surged and strange creatures ran rampant across the Nine Provinces. As Shen Du carried out his assignments to solve cases, he gradually uncovered the truth: Ling Yunzi had been murdered a century ago for refusing to hand over the complete map of the dragon lairs.

The Celestial Secrets Academy defied heaven to bind the dragons, while the Kingdom of Shuo coveted their energy and sought to seize Huai Prefecture. Caught between the court, foreign enemies, and the martial world, Shen Du progressed from seeking truth to seeking justice, and then to seeking the Dao. In the end, he broke the Nine-Point Dragon-Trapping Formation and confronted Dai Xuansu where the Huai and Si rivers converged, releasing the dragon energy to all under heaven.