Lin Ding, a vessel, died nine times, and every time he fell while on the path to overturning the righteous order.
Each time he opened his eyes, he returned to that winter night when he was fourteen: the stone prison in the forbidden grounds of the Qingxuan Sect, with the Mystic Demon Bone Token growing faintly warm against his chest.
With every death, his memories of his past lives grew clearer, and he became better at seeing the twisted forms beneath people's skin. He cultivated the Art of Burning Yang and Transforming into a Demon. Mystic bones gradually emerged along his shoulders and neck, and flame patterns appeared on his face. The righteous sects condemned him as someone whose bones had been corrupted, half human and half monster. He took their warning to heart, believing it a fatal sign of the backlash from cultivating demonic arts.
He killed the sect uncle who had deceived him, broke into the main altar of the Qingxuan Sect, and razed its thirty-six branch altars. Under the name Flame Demon, he struck terror throughout the cultivation world. It was only in his sixth life that he glimpsed the shocking deception: the so-called holy lands of the righteous path were merely a false world woven from pure-yang illusions, and everyone had been mutated in the Bone Corruption calamity a thousand years ago.
In his seventh life, he traced things back to primordial antiquity. Looking at the Mystic Demon Bone Token, drained of its pure yang and abandoned on the battlefield, he suddenly felt ice run through him. Had he truly been chosen by the artifact as its successor, or...
Across nine cycles of reincarnation, there was always a girl who felt strangely familiar deep in his heart, and who died for him. She was the only anchor he had as he sank deeper into darkness.
When he opened his eyes in his tenth life, he did not rush to pick up his blade.
This time, he would shatter the thousand-year illusion and uncover the truth: who was he, really?
