In the final years of the Tianwu era, the White Calamity descended, and eternal night sealed the heavens.
The entire imperial capital became a frozen wasteland, where people survived only thanks to the "Blazing Marrow Earthfire" buried deep underground.
The powerful lived high in vermilion mansions, drawing the purest "Golden Marrow Spiritflame" to nourish their Dao foundations and squander it as they pleased.
The wretched poor huddled in the South Street district. To get a smoke-leaking ceramic pipe beneath their beds, they sold their children and lay frozen at the steps.
Shen Yan was merely a lowly pipe-repair apprentice at the seventh furnace workshop of the Celestial Fire Bureau.
On the second day of the twelfth lunar month, inspectors abruptly sealed the main furnace. A case involving the theft of 3,200 jin of "Earth Spirit Fiendfire" came crashing down on them. His master was framed and thrown into death row, while thirty thousand poor people faced the prospect of freezing to death!
With only two hours left before a fate worse than death, Shen Yan touched a scorching broken pipe and unexpectedly awakened a forbidden ability, lost for a thousand years: [Divine Sense That Hears Fire]!
All fires have spirits, and each leaves an echo.
At his fingertips, broken pottery cried out its grievance, copper valves whispered, and earthfire roared. No murder plot or hidden conspiracy could escape him!
What's more, the savage fiendflames surging through the depths of the earth and tearing at its foundations sounded to him like countless decrees commanding them to bow!
A forged inspection report meant to frame him? He traces the soul with his divine sense and broadcasts the culprit's dying words in open court, slapping the powerful right in the face!
An attempt to silence him? He reverses the earth's ley lines, and ninety-nine scarlet dragons burst from the ground, burning the countless assassins to ash!
The polar night bears down, and the Divine Capital turns into an icy abyss?
Shen Yan stands above the earth's abyss in nothing but a single robe, hands behind his back. He points at the nexus of the Nine Hells:
"You've been drawing on this dragon marrow for three hundred years. Today, you're all giving it back!"
