The story takes place in an era when the Central Plains’ Daoist traditions have nearly vanished. Three hundred years ago, the Northern Frost Wolf Court invaded from beyond the passes, burning mountain sects, severing spiritual veins, and destroying cultivation manuals, shattering the Central Plains’ native cultivation system. The remnants of the old sects became hidden lineages, scattered among the military, rural villages, abandoned temples, academies, and forbidden lands across the mountains and rivers.
Three hundred years later, the Northern Frost Wolf Court declined, and the provinces of the Central Plains had only just begun to catch their breath when the Sun-Eclipsing Demon Court, from beyond the Eastern Sea, took advantage of their weakness and invaded. The Demon Court’s cultivators wielded bizarre techniques, and their military formations, demonic beasts, yin-yang arts, and demon-inscribed armor utterly overwhelmed the Central Plains’ scattered forces. During the siege of Cangwu Pass, the protagonist Shen Yan was chosen as master by the ancient artifact spirit “Mountain and River Demon-Slaying Talisman.” By killing enemy cultivators, demon soldiers, and demon-corrupted beings, he gains Demon-Slaying Points, gradually restoring his cultivation and reconstructing lost techniques. In the end, he rebuilds the Daoist traditions of the Central Plains, founds a sect and passes on its teachings, then leads the lineages of the mountains and rivers in a counterattack against the Demon Court.
