Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

This is the first volume in a multi-volume series set in a fantasy version of ancient China, where cultivation clans, families of martial artists who harness spiritual energy called qi, compete for power and prestige. Cultivators wield enchanted swords, play magical instruments, and hunt supernatural creatures in events called Night Hunts.

Thirteen years before the story begins, Wei Wuxian, known as the Yiling Patriarch, was killed at the Siege of the Burial Mounds. Once a brilliant disciple of the Jiang Clan of Yunmeng, he defected and pioneered demonic cultivation, a forbidden method of harnessing resentful energy from the dead. The cultivation world celebrated his death, but because his soul could not be summoned, the clans feared he might return and sealed the Burial Mounds. Thirteen years of silence gradually convince most that the Yiling Patriarch truly perished.

Wei Wuxian opens his eyes in a stranger's body. He discovers he was summoned through a forbidden sacrificial ritual: Mo Xuanyu, the illegitimate son of the late Jin Guangshan of the Jin Clan of Lanling, destroyed his own soul to offer his body to the Yiling Patriarch and request revenge against his abusive family. Expelled from the Jin Clan for allegedly harassing male peers, Mo Xuanyu returned to the Mo Estate and endured years of torment from his aunt Madam Mo and her son Mo Ziyuan. Cuts on Wei Wuxian's wrists mark the curse: If he fails to fulfill the wish, the wounds will destroy him.

Wei Wuxian causes a scene at the Mo Estate, embarrassing Madam Mo before visiting junior disciples from the Lan Clan of Gusu. That night, Mo Ziyuan steals a spirit-attraction flag and inadvertently summons a severed ghost arm from a dismembered corpse. The arm drains its hosts of blood and flesh, killing Mo Ziyuan and others before possessing Madam Mo. Wei Wuxian helps the Lan juniors, led by the capable Lan Sizhui, identify the host, then secretly commands the newly dead as fierce corpses, powerful reanimated dead distinct from weaker walking corpses. Before the situation spirals, Lan Wangji, known as Hanguang-jun, arrives and subdues both the fierce corpses and the ghost arm with his guqin. A cultivator of immense power, Lan Wangji fought both alongside and against Wei Wuxian in his previous life. Recognizing him, Wei Wuxian flees on a stolen donkey.

At Mount Dafan, cultivators have gathered to hunt a creature consuming townspeople's souls. Wei Wuxian encounters Jin Ling, the young heir of the Jin Clan, and realizes with horror that the boy is the son of Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli, Wei Wuxian's beloved senior martial sister, whose deaths are tied to his past actions. Jiang Cheng, the current head of the Jiang Clan and Jin Ling's maternal uncle, also arrives, suspicious that Mo Xuanyu may be Wei Wuxian reborn.

Inside the Shrine of the Heavenly Maiden, Wei Wuxian deduces the soul-eating creature is a rogue god, a natural rock formation made sentient through centuries of worship, which conventional spiritual devices cannot detect. He carves a bamboo flute and plays a desperate summoning melody. Wen Ning, the Ghost General, Wei Wuxian's most powerful fierce corpse, thought destroyed years ago, appears in iron chains and destroys the statue. Lan Wangji grabs Wei Wuxian's wrist to stop his flute, but Wei Wuxian sends one last command, and Wen Ning vanishes.

Jiang Cheng strikes Wei Wuxian with Zidian, a spiritual whip capable of expelling a possessing soul from a body. Because the sacrificial ritual constitutes a willing offering rather than possession, Zidian fails, publicly proving this is not a case of possession. To deflect suspicion, Wei Wuxian declares he finds Lan Wangji attractive, expecting the famously austere man to recoil. Instead, Lan Wangji announces he is taking Wei Wuxian back to the Lan Clan.

At the Cloud Recesses, the Lan Clan's mountain residence, Wei Wuxian is installed in Lan Wangji's personal quarters. While searching for an escape route, he sees dozens of discipline whip scars on Lan Wangji's back and a brand near his heart identical to one Wei Wuxian once bore. That night, Lan Wangji immobilizes him rather than throwing him out, displaying bewildering tolerance.

An extended flashback reveals their youth: at fifteen, Wei Wuxian studied at the Cloud Recesses under the strict Lan Qiren, Lan Wangji's uncle. He clashed with Lan Wangji from the first night, proposed harnessing resentful energy in class to Lan Qiren's fury, and relentlessly sought Lan Wangji's attention through pranks, gifts, and provocations. Despite constant rebuffs, Lan Wangji could never fully look away. The flashback ends with Wei Wuxian punching Jin Zixuan for insulting Jiang Yanli, inadvertently canceling their engagement.

In the present, the ghost arm overwhelms a soul-summoning ritual in the Cloud Recesses, injuring Lan Qiren. Wei Wuxian plays a duet with Lan Wangji to suppress the arm. It now points northwest, and they trace the trail to Xinglu Ridge in the Qinghe region, where they discover doorless stone bunkers containing coffins filled with sabers. They rescue Jin Ling, who has been buried alive inside a wall packed with corpses, and Wei Wuxian secretly transfers a curse mark from Jin Ling's leg onto himself.

Jiang Cheng captures Wei Wuxian and tests him by pressing his spirit dog close, exploiting Wei Wuxian's lifelong terror of dogs. In his panic, Wei Wuxian calls out Lan Wangji's name, confirming Jiang Cheng's suspicions. Jiang Cheng confronts him bitterly over the deaths of Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli, but Jin Ling intervenes, stealing Zidian and helping Wei Wuxian escape.

Nie Huaisang, the current head of the Nie Clan of Qinghe, reveals the stone fortress is his clan's ancestral Saber Offerings Hall: The Nie Clan's sabers accumulate lethal resentful energy, driving nearly every clan leader to die of qi deviation, a dangerous destabilization of cultivation. Corpses are buried alongside the sabers in a system of mutual suppression. Inside the wall, they find a male corpse with legs stitched on from a different body, matching the ghost arm.

In Yueyang, they learn about Xue Yang, a vicious criminal sheltered by the Jin Clan because he could partially restore the Yin Tiger Tally, a supremely powerful demonic weapon Wei Wuxian created. Xue Yang massacred the Chang Clan and blinded Song Lan, the closest friend of the wandering cultivator Xiao Xingchen. Xiao Xingchen sacrificed his own eyes to restore Song Lan's sight, then disappeared. At the Chang family cemetery, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji catch a gravedigger in black removing the dismembered corpse's torso from a fake burial. The gravedigger, who demonstrates unsettling familiarity with Lan sword techniques, escapes, but they seize the torso.

Wei Wuxian gets Lan Wangji drunk and slips out to summon Wen Ning, extracting two suppressive nails from his skull that had been destroying his consciousness and forcing obedience. The drunk Lan Wangji later carries Wei Wuxian to their inn and, with disarming honesty, claims Wei Wuxian as "mine," though Wei Wuxian assumes Lan Wangji means Bichen, Lan Wangji's own sword.

By morning, the three recovered body parts, a left arm, two legs, and a torso, react violently to one another. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji deduce that two opposing parties are at work: one who hid the dismembered body in locations with existing hauntings to suppress them, and another who threw the arm at the Mo Estate to attract attention. The hider has deep connections to both the Nie and Lan clans. The ghost arm now points south-southwest toward a fog-blanketed ghost city, and the story continues in Volume 2.