Zhang Yi, a young folklorist, carries his family’s secret inheritance, the incomplete ancient scroll Records of the Hidden Ruins, and embarks on a perilous journey to explore the hidden corners of China. This scroll is no mere record, but a dangerous “key” pointing to forty-two twisted “Hidden Ruins”: terrifying places where ancient taboos, overwhelming obsessions, or rifts to other realms have become deeply entwined with folk legends. Beneath the nuo masks of western Hunan, in the depths of cellars in southern Shanxi, and among the shadows of banyan trees in Lingnan, Zhang Yi encounters not only man-eating paper cutouts, undying ballads, and parasitic ancient mirrors, but also the deepest darkness of human nature. He must quell the rampaging fields of folk phenomena caused by the scroll’s imbalance, gather its scattered pages, and piece together the startling mystery of his own bloodline. Yet a mysterious organization coveting the power of the Hidden Ruins follows him like a shadow, while the resonance ability he uses to sense danger is quietly eating away at him, drawing him toward an unknown abyss. Every discovery is a sacrifice to the Hidden Ruins, and a step closer to the truth.
