To uncover the mystery behind his grandfather Chen Xuanzhen’s disappearance, retired soldier Chen Jiugao unexpectedly hauls up a bronze case in the Bermuda Triangle, engraved with the Chen family’s ancestral crest. Inside are the long-lost "Grave Robber’s Manual" and half of a tortoise shell. From then on, he roams the city as a “carefree little Taoist.” On the surface, he reads feng shui and tells fortunes for clients; in truth, he uses the antique shop Xuanzhen Pavilion as his base and gets drawn into one tomb-raiding mystery after another, from the Seventy-Two Suspicious Tombs to the South China Sea’s Guixu and the Celestial Palace atop the Clouds, where ancient and modern worlds intertwine. He uses geomancy to locate tombs and break mechanisms, and the Ma Yi physiognomy tradition to predict fortune and disaster. While contending with black-market forces and old rivals in the archaeological world, he quietly protects Su Qingtang, an archaeologist at odds with him because of an old family feud. In the end, he uncovers the secret of the “key to an ancient civilization” that the Chen family has guarded for generations. Through truth and inheritance, he finds redemption and joins hands with Su Qingtang to protect history.
