Ashes Beneath the Heavenly Mill

In a world where destiny is measured by spiritual roots and sects grind geniuses into fuel for their immortal ambitions, orphaned miller’s son Ren Huo awakens the lowest talent of all: a cracked root said to leak more qi than it can hold. On the day he is cast out from the outer court, he discovers an ancient inheritance hidden inside the village’s ruined grain mill—a black furnace that refines not herbs, but karmic remnants: the regrets, vows, and obsessions left behind by the dead. By consuming these ashes, Ren can steal fragments of insight from fallen cultivators, mastering techniques no one of his station should even comprehend.

But every refinement leaves a stain. The furnace attracts restless wills, sect elders begin hunting for the forbidden artifact, and the memories Ren inherits whisper of a forgotten age when heaven itself was manufactured by human hands. As he rises through tournament bloodbaths, pill wars, and tribulations that seem unnaturally targeted, Ren realizes his cracked root is not a defect but a seal—one tied to an ancient machine buried beneath the world. To survive the sects above him and the heavens above them, he must decide whether cultivation is the path to transcendence… or the oldest prison ever built.