Blood Refining Stele

Long Xie, a freshman, falls head over heels for Wen Shuyao, a sophomore, the moment he first sees her.

Summoning his courage, he confesses his feelings to Wen Shuyao. She doesn't turn him down outright, but gives him a chance: if he can place in the top three at the high-profile Ancient Martial Arts Tournament, she'll agree to be with him.

Overjoyed, Long Xie trains day and night, and his strength improves by leaps and bounds. He's the dark horse of this year's tournament, with a real chance of reaching his goal. But on the eve of the competition, disaster strikes. One of Wen Shuyao's admirers, consumed by jealousy, secretly lays a trap and poisons Long Xie with a vicious secret drug. In a single night, he loses all his cultivation, his meridians are shattered, and he is left a cripple.

Thinking he won't survive, his assailant secretly dumps him, barely clinging to life, in the perilous Burial Mountain Tomb, where bones litter the ground, and leaves him to die. Everyone believes he is dead.

The Ancient Martial Arts Tournament begins as scheduled the next day, and someone else takes Long Xie's place. Wen Shuyao searches everywhere, but the young man is nowhere to be found. No one knows where he went, and no one can give her an answer. Standing outside the noisy, crowded arena, Wen Shuyao feels an emptiness inside as an indescribable sadness washes over her. She has no idea that deep in the eerie Burial Mountain Tomb, the turn in Long Xie's fate, though he should have died, is only just beginning.