Chronicles of Demon Suppression in the Long River

At the Yangtze River’s “Yin-Yang Crossing,” an iron rhinoceros weeps blood in the dead of night. Scarlet grains of sand, entangled with human bones, rise to the surface and reveal the secret of a century-old human sacrifice. In the ninth year of the Tongzhi reign, the River Guardian’s Chief Inspector drove his own son into sunken timber to end the flooding, creating the curse of “sacrificing the river with pure-blood descendants.” A century later, sand diver Chen Tieshan discovers that the bloody sand flowing from the iron rhinoceros’s eyes is mixed with fragments of sacrificial porcelain from the Tongzhi era. Xiao Hanzhi, the star performer of a funeral troupe who vanished many years ago, reappears in the middle of the river wrapped in a lantern made of human skin, singing a deathly opera aria. His grandson, Chen Wangchuan, was born with double pupils. Whenever he touches an ancient relic, such as a bronze lock or a gilt-gold water-dividing ruler, memories of a past life surge back: he is the reincarnation of the Chief Inspector’s direct descendant, drowned a century ago. The brand on his ankle is identical to the one on the child’s corpse at the Tongzhi sacrificial altar. The “Living-Pile Ghost Market” beneath the water appears under the blood moon. The dead trade organs using years of human life as currency, while human-skin lanterns along its bluestone streets illuminate the lingering shadows of the drowned. The spirit-medium Qian Sufen’s baby-swapping scheme from twenty years ago is exposed by the market’s ledgers. Meanwhile, Zhou Xuantong, a descendant of the River Guardian’s Chief Inspector, tries to suppress evil spirits with a gilt-gold ruler, only to have an iron chain coil around his neck and drag him to the riverbed. At the chain’s end is a headless corpse: none other than Zhou Dingshan, the Chief Inspector who personally murdered his own son a century ago.