- On his 25th birthday, as Chen Xuan repairs a Tang Dynasty bronze compass, a blood-red coffin pattern appears on the back of his hand. The compass needle spins wildly, pointing toward the Qinling Mountains.
- A courier delivers a bloodstained wooden box containing half of a meteorite marked with a star chart and his mother’s silver bracelet. A note reads: “Bring the compass to Eagle Beak Cliff within three days, or your mother’s corpse will be waiting for you in the Yellow Springs.”
- A memory flashes into view: when he was ten, he watched his father disappear into a Qinling downpour carrying the compass. Before his mother died, she drew a coffin symbol in his palm.
