Xu Yanzhi, a PhD in historic architecture, is repairing a lightning-struck tree at the Forbidden City when he is unexpectedly sucked into the Nine-Dragon Wall of the fifteenth year of the Wanli reign.
He sees blood and tears seeping from the golden bricks in Dingling’s underground palace, and three child skeletons curled up inside the coffin of Emperor Shenzong, Zhu Yijun.
On the night he becomes a low-ranking clerk in the Ministry of Works, half a volume of the Forbidden Manual of Heavenly Crafts emerges from his inkstone.
Ink lines can trap the corpse ginseng leaping from the Dragon Relief Stone. The fourth mark on the Luban ruler conceals Zhang Juzheng’s handwritten files on sinister rituals, while the sword case atop the Hall of Supreme Harmony’s roof ornament bears the address of Xu Yanzhi’s modern studio.
“Lord Xu, do you know that the Eight-Armed Nezha City is missing an arm?”
The White Lotus demon monk points at the collapsed barbican of Xizhimen and sneers. Ten thousand bones of canal laborers at the bottom of the moat suddenly open their eyes.
When the seventh crack splits the Yangshan stele at Nanjing’s Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, Xu Yanzhi finally sees the truth:
The so-called “thirty-first year of Hongwu” is actually a Twin Dragon Lock forged by the Jianwen Emperor over thirty-three months
It locks away the chaos spilling out of Kunlun Ruins.
It locks away the shards left by the shattering of Yu the Great’s Nine Tripods.
And, above all, it locks away the souls of transmigrators who dare meddle with fate.
Now he stands atop Jingshan, clutching the Scroll of Yin Talismans and the Luban Axe.
Beneath him is the old pagoda tree where Chongzhen hanged himself; above him is a star chart rebuilt from the Nine Tripods.
Will this axe cleave the dragon vein, or the road home?
