The rain over Jinling City reeked of blood, as if the heavens had knocked over a jar of gore. Chen Jiuzhang curled up on a straw mat stained with mildew in the attic, his fingernails digging deep into his palms. The dark red birthmark on his chest was burning hot, as if a fire was rampaging beneath his flesh. The cold glow from his phone screen reflected off his pale face. One final text stabbed at his eyes:
"You won't live past midnight."
He was the last bloodline of the Chen family—a century-old feng shui clan whose legacy had crumbled a decade ago. His father, Chen Xuanli, had tried to break his son's life-ending fate—what the masters called a "Greedy Wolf Devours the Moon" destiny—by forcefully igniting the Seven-Star Lamps. He was struck by heavenly thunder and reduced to a charred corpse. His mother, cradling him as an infant, was killed by the force of five lightning talismans cast by the Seven Great Mystic Sects. As blood dripped through her fingers onto his swaddling cloth, she struggled to write one word with her dying breath:
"Run."
"Three minutes left."Chen Jiuzhang stared at his wristwatch. Each tick of the second hand pierced like a needle into his heart. Outside, lightning tore across the night sky, illuminating seven ominous hanging coffins in the courtyard—warnings from the Mystic Sects. The message was clear: if he dared step a foot outside the ancestral home, the beings inside would end him.
Suddenly, the ancestral bronze compass let out a piercing buzz. Its intricate array of trigrams glowed with a ghostly blue light as the needle spun madly in reverse. Beneath the floor tiles, a hazy apparition began to form—a dragon vein map of Jinling! A spectral golden dragon coiled within the old mansion, and in its glowing crimson eyes flickered a chilling aura.
The stroke of midnight split the rainy silence. All seven coffins exploded at once—splinters flying, black mist roaring upward. The Seven Killing Talismans of the Big Dipper surged into the sky, the vermillion ink coming to life, twisting into vicious ghostly faces with a blood-curdling shriek.
At that exact moment, the dragon vein map shimmered, and a phantom of Emperor Hongwu appeared. Clad in imperial robes, the mighty emperor raised his hand, and a tattered, ancient scroll floated gently toward Chen Jiuzhang—a surviving fragment of the "Dragon-Shaking Sutra."
"Protect my dragon veins…"The ghostly voice echoed with such force it nearly burst Chen's eardrums. Before he could react, a deep rumble erupted from the ancestral cellar. A pillar of golden light shot toward the heavens—it was the long-sealed "Ziwei Celestial Seal", hidden by Liu Bowen during the early Ming dynasty. Now, it had broken through layer upon layer of enchantments, slowly rotating mid-air.
Chen Jiuzhang stared in stunned disbelief. In that moment, he realized he might no longer be the doomed youth marked for death. His fate had changed—he was now the chosen guardian of Jinling's dragon veins, destined to confront unfathomable threats.
And this... was only the beginning of his legendary path to immortality.