In the twenty-third year of the Republic, strange wails in Qinghe Town's funeral home herald a night of horrors! Eighteen coffins burst open on the same day, and cinnabar lotus marks from the Blood Lotus Cult, which vanished a century ago, are carved into the zombies' necks. As Zhang Ke, a Maoshan disciple, uses inked strings to break the formation, the birthmark on his palm resonates with a golden lotus hairpin, awakening A Lian, a girl from Miaojiang. She is actually a fragment of the Saintess's divided soul, while Zhang Ke is the Host of the Twin Lifefire Mark!
Evil mists rise everywhere. The Rebirth Statues at the Pure Lotus Temple mass-produce living corpses, the Black Witch Cult of Miaojiang uses corpse gu to control corpse-driving processions, and Nanyang witch doctors use flying-head curses to steal souls. Zhang Ke discovers that every plot points to eighteen sinister sites in the Yellow River basin. They conceal the Saintess's dismembered corpse, and are also the key points of an ancient Corpse Emperor's seal! As black mist churns over Yinxu and the sinister Jiuli stele reveals the Corpse Emperor's handprint, the earth's ley lines are about to connect into a vast corpse-gu totem, and the mortal world is on the verge of becoming a living hell!
The Twin Lifefire Mark, brought together, can sever the ley lines and burn the corpse cocoons, but it also exposes Zhang Ke's true identity as a "Lifefire Host." His blood can awaken the corpse cocoons, and his soul is the final key to resurrecting the Corpse Emperor! To save A Lian, he exhausts his cultivation to seal her soul fragment inside the golden lotus hairpin. When he starts cultivating anew, he awakens the divine skill "Lotus Slash" and cleaves open a corpse cocoon in a Buddhist grotto with one strike, only to fall into a trap: fragments of the Saintess's corpse are being brought together, and the day the three cocoons merge will be the day the Corpse Emperor opens his eyes!
Zombies run rampant, gu worms swarm, and the righteous path lies in ruins! Watch the young Maoshan disciple, inked string in his left hand and golden lotus hairpin in his right, turn the tide step by step amid the corpse outbreak at the funeral home, the eerie mists of the Buddhist grotto, and the sinister stele at Yinxu. With an ordinary human body, he dares to battle the cataclysm threatening the ley lines. As a tide of corpses from the Yellow River floods Qinghe Town, can he use the cinnabar mark on his palm to carve out one final ray of light amid the shifting shadows of the dead?
