Wei Wuxian comes back wrong, and the show spends fifteen episodes proving he was right all along. The plot doubles back on itself constantly, what you think is a mystery about demonic cultivation becomes a story about how a society devours its own heroes. Watch it once for the mystery, watch it again because every scene changes when you know what Wei Wuxian has already lost.

Wei Wuxian was a cultivator who turned to the forbidden demonic path and played a major part in bringing down the tyrannical Wen Clan, but his power made the other clans see him as a threat. Hated and persecuted, he was betrayed by someone close to him and killed when the clans joined forces against him. Thirteen years later, a sacrificial ritual brings him back in the body of a madman. He crosses paths again with old acquaintances, among them Lan Wangji of the Gusu Lan Clan and Jiang Cheng of the Yunmeng Jiang Clan. A supernatural mystery soon troubles the clans, and Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji set out together to solve it, battling demons, ghosts and rival cultivators while an unexpected bond grows between them. Old conflicts rooted in their youth resurface along the way. The result is a fantasy drama that mixes action, mystery and the supernatural.