"I don't care what you read in some old, dusty tome. You can spend decades chasing an outmoded cultivation method that'll probably lead to a faux-breakthrough trap from the Emperor that turns you into a walking impurity tumor, or you can give me a couple months and I'll teach you how to punch through someone's head."

- Zelsys "Sevenfold Storm-conqueror" Newman, Founder of the Newman Family

The world at large has just begun its recovery from the nigh-apocalyptic War of Fog. Catastrophic environmental damage and gaping power vacuums stir the cogs of history into motion in the absence of open war, eternally greased by the blood and sweat of ambition.

A small duchy in the North of the country now stands at the precipice of upheaval as the burgeoning powers of the new era clash within its borders... Meanwhile, as the survivor of a now-extinct cultivator family struggles for survival in a world that cares not about his social status, the very embodiment of his escapist coping mechanisms forces him to pursue the fantasies of self-determination he had never dared act upon.