On the day Lin Xiaoque turns eighteen, his master, Old Bangzi, kicks him out of the ruined temple with a copy of "A Hundred Curious Tales of Ghosts" and a crooked peachwood sword, ordering him to deal with a combing ghost who uses the women’s restroom as her dressing room.
Who could have guessed that this boy, born with a pure yang constitution, would defeat ghosts with nothing but his sharp tongue? He insults a hanged ghost until its tongue gets tied in knots, mocks a starving ghost for its table manners, and enrages a century-old evil spirit until its soul scatters. His master, who appears to make a living selling things at a street stall, seems to trick his disciple with tomato sauce passed off as cinnabar, but is actually a reclusive expert who can draw the Seven-Star Formation.
From a starving ghost stealing offerings at the City God Temple, to a wronged spirit in a bridal sedan chair hiding a secret of Mount Longhu, to polluted spiritual ley lines in the demon realm and the gates of the demon world thrown wide open... Lin Xiaoque forms a ghost-hunting team with a fox-spirit girl and a scholar of mystic arts. They break formations with a fast-clapper version of the Soul-Calming Mantra, roast people out of their obsessions with doggerel, and even make a demon god’s baleful aura collapse with their insults.
“Disciple, that talisman’s crooked!” “Master, hand over the wine you spiked with talisman water first!” When a pair of wisecracking master and disciple face a catastrophe a thousand years in the making, will they keep sabotaging each other, or talk their way into bringing peace to the Three Realms?
