The story begins long before Ning Que enters the picture. Across the land, a few strange incidents catch the attention of powerful cultivators who travel to investigate them. They return with little to show for it, and whatever happened is quietly pushed aside while everyone goes back to their own lives. Most people never even hear about those events, although they end up mattering more than anyone realizes.
Life carries on in the Great Tang Empire. From the outside, the empire appears peaceful, but different factions are constantly competing behind the scenes. Officials protect their own interests, noble families look for opportunities to strengthen their position, and cultivators pursue their own ambitions. Ordinary people rarely have the luxury of worrying about those things, they are too busy trying to make a living.
Ning Que is one of them. He serves as a soldier in the border city of Wei and lives with Sang Sang, the little girl he escaped with after his family was killed years ago. The two have relied on each other ever since. They are not wealthy, and they are not important, but they manage to get by. Ning Que has a habit of joking around, arguing over small profits, and acting as though very little bothers him, though the past still influences many of the choices he makes.
After earning recognition through his military service, Ning Que receives the chance to travel to Chang’an, a place where people from every background eventually cross paths. Students hoping to study, cultivators seeking stronger teachers, officials chasing promotion, merchants searching for opportunity, all of them end up there for different reasons. Ning Que arrives hoping to build a better future for himself and Sang Sang, but things do not go as smoothly as he expected. Cultivation does not come naturally to him, and many people have already decided what someone like him can or cannot achieve.
He keeps moving anyway. Instead of waiting for luck, he pays attention to the people around him, takes advantage of the chances he can find, and solves problems the same way he survived the frontier, by thinking before acting. Along the way he starts uncovering pieces of his family’s past, while Sang Sang’s unusual background slowly begins attracting attention as well. Neither of them understands where it will lead, but it becomes clear that leaving the past behind was never really an option.
