On a stormy night, a subway accident leaves Yuyi waking up in a forest glowing with phosphorescence. The doorway-shaped mark on his wrist grows faintly hot, and the copy of the Classic of Mountains and Seas in his arms turns its pages without a breeze. The old book his father left behind is now guiding him into a world beyond the human realm. Twelve crossings, twelve gatekeepers, twelve trials of life and death.
Luxu hides the key to lost memories. Taotie devours everyone's true name. Hou demands an old debt that can never be repaid. Qiongqi twists the boundaries between good and evil. Jiuying warps the most precious memories. Gudiao tests the worth of the soul. Yinglong remains trapped by a betrayal from ten thousand years ago, unable to break free. Xiangliu corrodes flesh and soul with nine kinds of poison... Each crossing lays bare the human heart.
Yuyi is not alone. Lin Yu, a folklorist with amnesia; Song Jiang, a knife-selling fortune teller burdened by his family's blood debt; Tu Xu, a forensic doctor with blood on his hands; Feng Guizhi, a veteran allergic to time; Chu Ru, a silent sixteen-year-old boy; and An Li, a mysterious woman whose name has been erased. The seven travel together, struggling to survive from one crossing to the next. Some fall, some forget, and some become the very thing they fear most. The rusty scissors in Yuyi's hand can cut the shadows of all things, but they cannot cut through his own fate: “The one who cuts shadows loses fifty years of life.”
Twelve crossings, twelve gates of life and death. Make it across, and the road home awaits. Fail, and you become an eternal prisoner. But even if they make it through every crossing, will home really be waiting for them?
