Thirteen years after his death, the once-feared cultivator Wei Wuxian wakes up in someone else's body, dropped back into a cultivation world that still fears the name he made for himself commanding the dead. Investigating a cursed artifact pulls him back into contact with Lan Wangji, a disciplined cultivator from the Lan Sect who knew him before his fall, and the two end up retracing what actually happened to Wei Wuxian all those years ago.