In the thousand-year-old city of Xi'an, a string of bizarre murders takes place: bronze warriors demand heads to claim lives, bone flutes control corpses, and masked figures summon spirits in the dead of night. Behind every case lie eerie folk customs buried by history and unsolved mysteries.
Criminal investigation expert Yang Yang, also known as Brother Daniu, leads his team in the investigation. Forensic pathologist Yang Xue, or Xue'er, finds biological traces on the bodies that defy common sense. Criminal psychologist An Jing, known as Jingjing, detects echoes of ancient shamanic Nuo rituals in the suspects' behavior. And trace evidence expert Wang Qianjin, or Fatty Wang, pieces together clues from the crime scenes and uncovers a mysterious organization called the Yellow Springs Society.
As the investigation deepens, they discover that every case points to a conspiracy spanning a thousand years: the Bronze Life-Stealing Art left behind by a Tang Dynasty alchemist is being reactivated with modern technology. Active copper enzymes, infrasound weapons, holographic projections... Ancient sorcery has returned, cloaked in the guise of science. And Yang Yang's ancestral Yang Family Secret Scroll turns out to contain vital clues to unraveling these “supernatural phenomena.”
