In Republican-era Beiping, Xiao Jiuming of the antique shop Jubaozhai is drawn into a conspiracy over half of a bronze compass fragment. A scar-faced gang arrives with a fragment of a Western Xia manuscript, revealing a connection between the "Tianshan Blood Pool" and the "Calamity of the Nine Gates." The underground palace, buried three thousand meters below the surface, holds not only a secret art that can grant immortality to the living, but is also closely tied to the century-old curse on the Xiao family. When the Big Dipper hangs upside down and the Bohai star map comes to light, Xiao Jiuming joins forces with Jia Tianheng, Wang Dazhuo, A Ning, Jin Wuhui, and Lin Fengzhuo, carrying Luoyang shovels as they venture deep into the Tianshan Mountains. They must not only guard against the scar-faced gang's leader, but also decipher the code in the wolf-head crest left behind by the Western Xia dynasty. The sobbing of a female ghost in a mirror on a snowy night and blood beetles formed from a letter are all warnings: this struggle spanning millennia will ultimately uncover the final truth about bloodlines, immortality, and the survival of civilization.
