Wei Wuxian pioneers demonic cultivation, a forbidden path that draws power from resentful energy, and becomes both famous and feared in the war against the Qishan Wen Clan before the great clans unite to destroy him. Thirteen years later a young man named Mo Xuanyu sacrifices his own soul in a forbidden rite and drags him back into a living body, bound to settle the stranger's grievance. Moving among the cultivation clans under that borrowed name, Wei Wuxian crosses paths again with Lan Wangji of the Gusu Lan Clan.