In the autumn of 1949, Long Jiu, a corpse walker from western Hunan, accepts his final job: transporting a corpse from the future.
The body of a Nationalist colonel clutches ration coupons from 1950. A Chenzhou talisman turns into a QR code, and a copper bell rings on its own, pointing toward Nanjing. When the spirit-summoning bell shatters the barrier between eras, a storm of occult arts sweeps across western Hunan, spanning three different ages.
【Death Express】
The corpse train crosses the You River by night, with 999 red-star lanterns arrayed in a formation heading “south.” The lantern bases are engraved with U.S. military canned-food serial numbers. The corpse-walking route map matches the Fourth Field Army’s march, while a microfilm hidden inside a corpse contains secret coordinates that could change the outcome of the Yangtze River Crossing Campaign.
【A Double Life】
● Morse code on the walls of the Fenghuang City mortuary predicts when Changsha will be peacefully liberated.
● A future reader scans a Chenzhou talisman and somehow changes the casualty figures of the Huaihai Campaign.
● A Soviet mechanical watch runs backward, as KGB agents and a People’s Liberation Army reconnaissance platoon clash across time.
【The Final Hour】
At dawn on October 1, Long Jiu detonates his life-bound talisman at Broken Dragon Cliff. Its ashes reveal the rising sun of New China. And inside the chest of the last “corpse,” a microfilm records the core formulas for the Two Bombs and One Satellite program. This corpse-walking journey across a century is no more than the first footnote in the secret history of the republic.
