Sequence: Eight Paths Ascendant

The world holds four cardinal directions, and sprawling between them lie the Eight Paths. All living beings fall into ten categories: the Five Immortals and the Five Insects. Heaven, Earth, Human, God, and Ghost; Scales, Hair, Shell, Feather, and Insect. Each path bears its own nature—the Divine Path turns to wickedness, the Human Path to thievery, the Scale Path to lust, and the Hair Path to cruelty. The Earth Path raises armies, the Shell Path seizes mountain strongholds, the Feather Path steals the fruits of others' labors, and the Ghost Path grows rich from raising the dead. Three feet above, Heaven looks down, deceiving all who live beneath it. A hundred feet below, foulness churns and creeps upward, invading and claiming lives. Every battle fought, every life taken, is for the sake of consuming more qi—the measure of one's fortune. Every bond forged and favor traded is a gamble to advance one's lot in the river of fate. In the jianghu, the first question one must ask a stranger is always: "Brother, which path do you walk?" Shen Rong has just arrived in this world. The very first thing he needs to do, naturally, is to get himself on one.