Story, characters & factions

Soul served the Order, a hidden organisation that keeps the Wulin, the martial underworld, running by its own brutal rules.

Set up for the murder of the Order's leader and turned on by the comrades he fought beside, he loses a final duel to Zuo Shang, his sworn brother since childhood.

The Flesh Sculptor gives him a tainted heart that buys exactly 66 days. The director frames those days as the first Soul has ever lived for himself: a man who only followed orders, suddenly free and short of time.

The hunt for a cure and for the truth leads him to Pangzhen, a town full of rival martial factions.

Side quests shape the Soul you play: the story branches on what you do, who you help and which items you hold at key moments, up to a true ending that only a thorough run reaches.

The campaign runs across eleven chapters, the prologue included:

• Diverging Paths (prologue)
• Reckless Pursuit
• Against the Flow
• Steel and Steam
• Snake's Reflection
• Heartless Remnant
• Town of Death
• The Heart's Trail
• The Lake
• Stalemate
• A Soul's Worth

It opens sixteen years in the past, on Soul sparring with Zuo Shang in a bamboo grove, then cuts to their duel to the death in a thunderstorm.

Present Day opens on Soul riding a wagon in the rain, where The Hunt, the Order's hunter, catches up with him: the second boss, in a chapter called Reckless Pursuit.

The story then picks up in Weeping Creek Valley, a dark valley that runs mostly in a line but branches upward. The first main quest there, Against the Flow, sends Soul upstream.

Against the Flow is also the name of the chapter. Its End of Chapter card appears at the Mandate outpost, after Peng Meng and the Four Axes letters, and the next main quest, Deep in the Valley, sends Soul to the top of the Steel Tower for a lost key.

Jagged Steel, the Frenzied Brute, is the third boss, in a riverbed of the valley. Peng Meng, the Axemaster, is the fourth. He drops the Dread Axe, and the story then has you break a Chain Barrier with it.

Steel and Steam follows: Soul enters the Steel Tower to find the Hunt's hideout, then settles the score with The Hunt at the foot of the Great Waterfall, the fifth boss fight. The quest then sends him through the cave behind the waterfall.

Snake's Reflection opens Crimson Forest, the second region, where Hua Qianxiao, the Sword Fanatic, guards the way in.

At the edge of the forest the Illusion of Inanis tells Soul what happened there. Someone in the Mandate plotted with Zuo Shang and wrecked the battle against the Maskwalkers. The Chord, the puppet that holds her daughter, then played the Song of Annihilation and turned the depths of the forest into an isolated illusion. Inanis bound the puppet with the Art of Distant Calling, which is why Soul keeps hearing weeping.

A One Year Ago flashback names the traitor. Zuo Shang offers Huangxing a deal: he will make Yuyin, another of the Pillars of Kunlun, disappear during a joint operation, if Huangxing subdues the Chord and delivers her where Zuo Shang chooses. Huangxing takes it: "Whatever happens to Yuyin... it has nothing to do with me."

The chapter ends after Bai Chilian, deep in the forest. Soul wakes in the Village of Lu with the Broken Illusory Pipa, and the quest Illusory Pipa asks for its head, strings and backplate.

Pangzhen is the hub: martial artists from across the Wulin have gathered there, turning the town into a trap of rival factions.

Nine regions connect into one world. In story order:

• Weeping Creek Valley
• Crimson Forest
• Village of Lu
• Pangzhen
• Mandate Encampment
• Meigu Lake
• Mountain of Imprisonment
• Mirage Estate, the north of Pangzhen
• Mount Soulrend, where the story ends

The State of Play described four of the areas beyond the town:

• A valley overrun by ruthless bandits.
• An abandoned warehouse of hanging puppets, where a dark ritual is under way.
• A steam-powered iron tower built for a dark experiment.
• A vast lake Soul crosses aboard a peculiar high-speed vessel.

• The Order: Soul's former organisation; "Will of the Order" is his old rank.
• Allied Justice: the sect whose camp and Seven Star disciples fill the 2025 demos.
• Bastion of Mó: Mó Yuan's stronghold, opposed to the Order.
• Transcension: the process that turns people into "husks"; Perfect Transcension is its refined, deadlier form.
• Primal Stone: two books of the Mystery of Transcension series, found in the Weeping Creek Valley Sha-Chi Tower, track it. Devices made from it calmed Sha-Chi in fewer than 20% of cases; once eaten, the share rose to 50%. The tower's report adds that the furnace has gone cold, with no Primal Stone left inside.
• The Baishan Sect: once one of the great sects of the righteous path, its Reflections page says, until Dugu Linghe used Transcension to cut her way through a succession ceremony, avenging the death of her child. Bi Taotao took over the broken sect and led it into the alliance under the Three Pillars of Kunlun. A Healer's Journal in Justice Camp says Sister Wen of the sect "used to be a kind person" until Perfect Transcension changed her.
• The Pillars of Kunlun: Huangxing, Yuyin and Moji, who led the Mandate against the Maskwalkers. Huangxing's Edict says Yuyin fell in battle and Moji fled, and announces the art of Perfect Transcension; the Crimson Forest flashback shows the pact with Zuo Shang behind it.
• Maskwalkers: those who undergo Transcension. A loading screen puts it plainly: without masks, wild Sha-Chi kills them.
• The Discordance: a world beside the Waking Realm where time and space follow other rules, says its Reflections page. The consciousness of the dead can linger there, and a mind defeated in a battle there can be lost in the victor's illusions.
• Xie Huichun: the legendary healer followed by the Healer's Journal's author, who plans to cut off both arms to become a conduit that draws the excess Sha-Chi out of Allied Justice disciples.
• The Lady of the Veil: named on the PlayStation Store page among the mysteries of the Phantom World. In Crimson Forest, Bai Chilian serves her through a voice she calls Master Herald.
• The Order, as its own book defines it: it has no other name, it is neither good nor evil and enforces only the Rules it recognises, and anyone who flees it is not allowed to stay among the living.
• The Long Pillars: the Reflections book What's Sealed Within the Long Pillar? says Illusionists of the Phantom Arts once tore open Rifts between the waking world and the Discordance. The Long Clan, which ruled the Wulin then, had masters build Mindseals over the openings: those are the pillars.
• A Wulin Tales page by the Weeping Creek Valley pillar, left by the Grand Scholar of the Lóng Clan: he carved the inscription himself and vowed to guard the forbidden ground for life, to atone for his clan.
• Bloodline Awakening: the quest to find all five Lóng Pillars and complete their trials. The Weeping Creek Valley trial is a fight with The Gold-Masked One.
• The bells: in Zuo Shang's memory at Lóng Pillar Overlook, Mu Tianmiao says the bell they discovered stirs the Sha-Chi in the body and makes it stronger.
• Fragments of the Mandate: notes left by the Mandate garrison of the valley. In the Garrison Log, a soldier who lost his right arm begs to try Transcension; the Inventory Report counts three days of rations and missing lingzhi and ginseng.
• A Wulin Fighter's Pledge: a letter from Huzi, who has trained with a blade for ten years and wants to join the three heroes of Kunlun leading the fight against the Maskwalkers.
• The Herald and the Heart of the Lake: Firefly's six Memory Flowers in Village of Lu tell how she and her senior brother Dusk, Phantom Art illusionists, worked inside the Herald's puppet ritual to reach the Heart of the Lake and destroy a Rift there. Lan Shaodi says the Herald makes puppets by infusing them with the minds of living people.
• Hua the Bride: seven book pages. The matchmaker Mrs. Wang praises Master Li's only son to Master Song; Song Fu replies that the talk of his daughter and the neighbour's son is gossip; Hua writes to "my dear husband, Liu Shangli" that she still waits for him. Her story ends at the Deadly Betrothed fight.

A memory titled Three Years Ago plays in Village of Lu, after the fight with Yuzan. Mu Tianmiao tells Zuo Shang how the Order began: "The Long Clan led the righteous path, while the Bastion of Mo united the unorthodox... The three of us sought to replace the divide between righteous and evil with rules. We founded the Order."

The battle that destroyed the Long Clan and the Bastion of Mo secured the Order's place in the Wulin, and "those battles claimed my two closest friends". For a decade after their fall the Order erased every trace of them. Then came the massacre at Soulrend Cliff, which took nearly every master of the old Wulin. Mu Tianmiao's last word on it: "As long as the rules endure, the Order is eternal."

Soulrend Cliff is also where launch-day guides put the last fight of the normal ending, in the final region.

Book pages are filed by collection in the Archive. Seven are there before the valley opens, added when the Prologue ends: three of The Order, three of Reflections and one of Mystery of Transcension. The valley holds 26 more, listed here with the bell nearest to each.

Two of the new pages carry plot. In Response from Sect Leader Ming, the Master of Sun Moon Hall tells his "Nephew Gu" to handle the Four Axes with care and burn the letter. In Reply to a Request for Aid, Lingran turns down Sect Leader Bi of the Baishan Sect, who had written for help.

Collections run across the regions. Known totals: Reflections 18, Fragments of the Mandate 18, Wulin Tales 17, Investigating the Villagers' Belongings 11, The Order 9, Pillars of Kunlun 9, Mystery of Transcension 8, The "Four Axes" Case Files 8 and Hua the Bride 7, about 105 pages. Zuo Shang's Game, Huangxing's Betrayal and Quick Hand Zhang's Relic List also exist; their counts are not known yet.

The pages one launch run picked up between the forest's first bell and the Village of Lu, in the order it found them, with the bell nearest to where each was read.

Reflections: Crimson Forest explains the red leaves: the Pillars of Kunlun ambushed the Maskwalkers here two years before, and the Sha-Chi of the battle soaked into the trees. List of the Fallen strikes out a name, "...Ye", the same Senior Brother Ye whose Transcension the Fellow Disciples Memory Flower shows.

Ten more pages from the same launch run, read in Village of Lu between Zhuo Bi and Mu Xiaokui. Three collections appear here for the first time: Mystery of the Lady, Prayers and Vows, and The Herald.

• Well Closure Notice (Investigating the Villagers' Belongings). Woodcutter Lu A-Si touched the forbidden well; by morning his mind was bound to a puppet that weeps without end. Last bell rested at: Well of the Three Puppets.
• Mid-Autumn (Investigating the Villagers' Belongings). A villager who stayed: Old Man Jiu came home without his soul, Little Gui fell asleep in the fields, the well water tastes different. Last bell rested at: Mandate Encampment Outer Gate.
• Ritual Notice: How to Meet the Lady (Mystery of the Lady). Bind red cloth into flowers, veil the face, lie down and enter the dream. Last bell rested at: Mandate Encampment Outer Gate.
• Funeral Register (Investigating the Villagers' Belongings). Wooden Puppet children came to elder Lu Sanjin's wake and left a register of sleeping children. Last bell rested at: Zhang's Hideout.
• Frost Descent (Investigating the Villagers' Belongings). A Wooden Puppet keeps knocking, asking in Mother's voice whether the writer feels better. Last bell rested at: Zhang's Hideout.
• Village of Lu (Reflections). Smugglers dug a tunnel to Pangzhen; the Lu Clan Shrine stands on the Mountain of Imprisonment, north of Meigu Lake. Last bell rested at: Young Master Lan's Hideout.
• Prayer to the Lady (Prayers and Vows). Xu Wei offers his broken body to the Lady of the Veil so his elder brother can leave the village. Last bell rested at: The Lady Grounds.
• Songstress Puppet's Letter (Wulin Tales). Her letter to Pei, by his empty body: "I will wait for you at…" Last bell rested at: Broken Puppet Pit Bottom.
• Puppet Mute's Blueprint (The Herald). A tongueless puppet: "It is both a tongue and a key. Place Mute in The Crimson Manor."
• Engine Boats and Docks (The Order). The Servant's Engine Workshop built Sha-Chi boats for the Order; boatmasters run the waterside docks. Last bell rested at: Lakeside.