1989: From Gravekeeper Boy to Ninth Master of the Earth Veins

1989, Kaoshantun in Northeast China.

Seventeen-year-old orphan Chen Jiu has just finished tending his adoptive father's grave when he uncovers two keepsakes: an old compass and a journal with several pages torn out.

That night, he gains the ability to see qi. The qi of people, the qi of the land, and the black qi rising from graves are all laid bare before his eyes.

He fishes out the water-monkey someone was raising in the river. Then, with his master and a forty-year-old ledger of blood debts, he seals away the "old man" who had been waiting inside the mountain for forty years.

But the deeper he investigates, the more alarmed he becomes. Someone who removes talismans protecting towns, sinks stone pillars, and collects the names of the dead is laying the second move in a game, following his father's journal. The only clue is a left hand missing half its little finger.

Before he died, his father swallowed the other half of the seal.

His father said: "To keep watch means standing right here and going nowhere."

And so, everyone within a hundred li knows that Kaoshantun has a Ninth Master who can hold the things in the mountains at bay, and keep the demons in people's hearts at bay too.

Watch as a country boy turns the world his father could not finish protecting into his own domain.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.