Lin Xiaoman, an associate professor of folkloristics, uses her expertise to stage fake supernatural livestreams to cover up the crimes of the swindling gang White Crane Hall. Then she crosses paths with Yan Jiuxiao, a Daoist master who can use a compass to predict fortune and misfortune. He not only exposes her scheme to make incense from the ashes of the dead, but also discovers a link between her missing younger brother and the Xiangxi Corpse King case from ten years ago.
Forced to work together to investigate a horde of corpses in a subway station, Lin Xiaoman discovers that the corpses' birth dates and times perfectly match her brother's experimental data. Meanwhile, Zhou Mubai, the director of the Folklore Research Institute who secretly loves her, has already been corrupted by corpse oil and turned into a half-human, half-ghost monster. At last, they break into Chu Yunsheng's antique shop and uncover a century-spanning revenge scheme: the so-called "Corpse King resurrection technique" is nothing more than the ultimate mockery of the living by the dead, who cannot let go of their worldly obsessions.
Yan Jiuxiao burns his divine soul to summon heavenly lightning, while Lin Xiaoman converts her younger brother's quantum computer into a "thunder ritual altar." As Chu Yunsheng's ghost laughs wildly amid the green mist, they finally understand: from the very beginning, this clash between the occult and science was a cycle of destiny.
