Dust To Immortals
In a universe where farming is a falsehood, one shattered man possesses the truth: in order to save everyone, he has to rot everything.**
Exiled to the Blighted Steppes' toxic wasteland after his meridians were smashed by an explosion in a Rot Zone, scholar Lián survives by mapping patterns of rot for scavengers. Disabled and discarded, he discovers a nightmare truth: the "impurities" corrupting the world are not just that—**Primordial Decay**—raw energy from creation's beginning. Modern cultivation suppresses this energy, but at a terrible cost: with every pilled-down pill swallowed, with every immortal who ascends to the heavens, *accelerates* the unmaking of reality itself.
When Lián touches a fossilized dragon bone humming with rot, his broken form does the impossible: it *drinks* in the corruption. Where others break down, he thrives. Under the tutelage of **Old Man Moth**—an immortal rotted alive for 10,000 years—Lián learns to master forbidden **Rot Arts**: miniaturizing foes to dust, unwinding spacetime through decay, and concocting elixirs from the raw juice of chaos. But his power catches the attention of **The Preservers**, a cult of immortals who purge "decay-spreaders" to maintain their parasitic reign. Lián invades the radiant facade of **Jade Aegis Academy**—where cultivators are taught to bleed decay into mortal cities—and uncovers Heaven's worst secret: the gods are not wise.
They are *cowards*, poisoning lower planes to prevent a cosmic extinction. To end this cycle, Lián must become everything the universe is terrified of: **Heaven's Anathema**, the very literalization of decay. Salvation, however, comes with a cost: to bring back existence, he must first bring empires, sects, and even the immortals themselves. to dust.
