Wu Xie unexpectedly receives a mysterious package engraved with a pattern of the Bronze Sacred Tree, triggering the nine-layered coded mechanism his Third Uncle left behind thirty years ago. As the bronze casket opens, a silk manuscript detailing the Qin King's underground palace and a secret elixir of immortality comes to light. The Iron Triangle gathers and ventures deep into the ley lines of Mount Li. At a thousand-year-old, ice-sealed altar to the Nine Dragons, they discover twin gates of yin and yang. The resurrection of the bronze warriors and the mechanisms of the Nine Palaces star chart lead them into the innermost secret of the First Emperor's Mausoleum: an immortality experiment using living human figures as vessels. And the legendary elixir of immortality turns out to be a forbidden creation, grafting humans together with the merfolk.
