In the chaotic final years of the Tang Dynasty, Huang Chao captures Chang'an. Yang Yun Song, a feng shui master from the Imperial Astronomical Bureau known as Jiupin, flees with the palace's secret text, The Jade Casket's Esoteric Arts, only to be drawn into a battle to defend civilization that spans both the worlds of the living and the dead. Blending feng shui and occult lore with supernatural horror and historical mystery, this epic novel follows Yang Jiupin's flight as it uncovers the chilling hidden history behind the legacy of Chinese civilization.
When black blood seeps from Chang'an's Vermilion Bird Avenue and the vengeful spirits of Daming Palace return to life amid the ravages of war, Yang Yun Song realizes, even as a corpse-transcending immortal pursues him, that Huang Chao seeks more than the throne. The rebel leader also dreams of using sorcery to sever the roots of Chinese civilization in pursuit of a “pure-blood” fantasy. With his young attendant Bao Qin, Yang ventures into the Kunlun Mountains' “Gorge of Ten Thousand Ghosts,” where he faces spectral soldiers conjured from the bones of three thousand maidens. In the mass graveyards of Qianzhou, he breaks the “curse of extinction,” powered by the bones of descendants, only to discover a black-market trade in the souls of the living in the ghost market of the Yellow Springs. Every ruin is evidence of civilizations coexisting; every spell is a betrayal of the “Way of Tolerance.”
Centered on The Jade Casket's Esoteric Arts, the novel turns Yang Yun Song's feng shui investigations into a deadly struggle against sorcery. He uses the Big Dipper formation to break the spectral soldiers' dragon-locking stakes, the Primordial Bagua formation to destroy blood-sha corpses, and a nine-square grid to reverse the curse of the “Five Evils and Three Deficiencies.” The supernatural scenes are eerie and shocking: cherry-blossom curse mists that devour people, mixed-blood skeletons with altered genes, and fabricated civilizations stitched together from fragments of history. Each conceals an allegory for the fracturing of civilization.
As Yang Yun Song flees from Chang'an to Qianzhou, the story gradually reveals a larger conspiracy: forces from an island nation are exploiting Huang Chao's rebellion, seeking to control China through feng shui.
