The Waning Moon Bears a Parasite

The Great Yao is a glorious matriarchal age, where women hold power and men bow low. The order of Heaven's Way prevails, and the people live in peace.

On a stormy night of thunder and rain, Yin Ran, a female general guarding the frontier, was patrolling when she found a baby in a pile of weeds. Seeing the child's mysterious abilities, she couldn't bear to let her fall into the clutches of the Fate Bureau in the imperial palace. Softened by compassion, she secretly took the child in and raised her.

That child was Wanyue. An anomaly born of an oversight in Heaven's Way, she was blessed with a sacred Gu-worm physique. Though female, she lacked the righteous, commanding aura expected of women in this world, and was timid and gentle by nature. In this glorious age, Wanyue became the lowliest of people. Her own kind despised her, the world rejected her, and even the men who should have been obedient dared to humiliate and trample her without restraint.

She watched as everyone in the world enjoyed security and happiness, while she alone was trapped in endless torment. Slowly, she came to believe that her very birth was a mistake.

The tenderness of the past rotted away, and hatred took root in her bones and blood. Wanyue fought back, only to draw the attention of Empress Fushuang, who ruled from the highest heavens, and was imprisoned in a forbidden place deep within the palace. The high walls could confine her body, but not the resentment that grew wild within her. Fed by resentment and forged in her own flesh and blood, she practiced the way of Gu in the gloomy prison, awakening the countless Gu worms lying dormant.

The Gu worms silently swept over the palace walls, infecting the court and binding the minds of the people. By the time Fushuang realized that the tide had turned, the hearts of the people across thousands of miles of mountains and rivers had already changed.

Wanyue, once a lowly anomaly at the mercy of others, ultimately toppled the glorious age with countless resentful Gu and ascended to the pinnacle of power.

The order of the glorious age shattered in her hands. Yet beneath this throne lay only the desolation burned out of a lifetime of suffering.