In the seventeenth year of Yongning under the Dayan Dynasty, Pei Zhao, commander-in-chief of the Northern Garrison, receives a secret decree and rushes back to the capital overnight. He is not met with a reward, but with the charge of plotting rebellion and regicide. Surrounded and attacked in the imperial city, with his armored troops all dead, his young son entrusted to another's care and his wife imprisoned, he falls from the heights of the court to the snowy wastes of the Northern Frontier. There, in a mortal body, he battles demons and monsters, and by a stroke of luck meets Lord Yunzhong, who gives him the chance to practice Qi cultivation.
He joins the Tianheng Sect, gathers his old comrades, and secretly returns to court. Step by step, Pei Zhao goes from a wronged general to a seeker of immortality. He has never cultivated for immortality, but to win justice for the people he leaves behind. When Prince Jin's tyranny, demonic chaos across the land, and the schemers in the Hall of Heavenly Secrets bare their fangs, he finally understands: the Supreme One's detachment is the highest realm of the immortal path, but compassion for the human world is the path he has chosen.
He endures the suffering of the mortal world and glimpses the truths of the immortal path; he studies the mysteries of yin and yang and takes control of the secrets of heaven. With the Nine Provinces as the board and all living beings as its pieces, watch as he fights his way off the board, shatters the shackles of fate, and restores peace and clarity to the human world.
