At the age of eight, Guo Yunci trudged through the snow to reunite with his birth father, only to be met with cold rejection from Guo Jinxiu. He collapsed with a high fever on a frigid, snowy road, but Chief Minister Su Wenyuan wrapped him in a fox-fur cloak and saved his life.
Seeing that Guo Yunci possessed an innate Daoist constitution, Su Wenyuan went to great lengths to send him to True Dao Mountain, where he trained for over a decade. Still a youth, he reached the Golden Core stage, becoming a cultivation prodigy the sect had not seen in a century.
The strict rules of immortal cultivation bound him: cultivators could not use their powers to interfere in the mortal court.
But then a secret letter arrived from the foot of the mountain. Su Wenyuan, who had saved and protected him for half his life, had been framed by a treacherous minister and thrown into the imperial prison. And the birth father who had abandoned him in the snow all those years ago was imprisoned in the same cell as his benefactor.
He possessed power that could reach the heavens, yet the sect's rules tied his hands. He had cultivated the path to immortality, yet could not protect the only person in the world who had ever given him warmth.
He was willing to damage his Dao foundation and shatter the rules, entering the mortal world to clear Su Wenyuan's name.
He knelt for days before the palace steps, enduring the scorn of thousands as his Dao heart shattered. He could only watch as the foster father who raised him turned gray-haired overnight from worry.
Blood ties were cold and the immortal path was empty. Throughout his long journey of cultivation, he had never sought transcendence or ascension. He only wanted to give everything he had to protect that one tender, human warmth.
