The Beast-Headed Relic Returns to the Ruins: Refusing to Pay a Hefty Ransom for the National Treasure

When the twelve animal heads open their eyes, humanity finally realizes it has been living inside an embryo.

At a Paris auction house, Lu Zhaoye bids 270 million for the Yuanmingyuan animal-head sculptures, then tears up the check on the spot. “These were stolen from China in the first place!”

Overnight, he becomes an internationally wanted man. A blood edict from the Qianlong Emperor springs from inside one of the heads: “Gather all twelve keys at the Haiyantang, and the ley lines of the demon dragon in the east can be subdued.”

While on the run, he meets Xiang Wan, a cultural relic restorer with a mechanical prosthetic limb. He has no idea that the star chart for Xu Fu's voyage east is hidden in her spine.

Earth is actually an unhatched interstellar ark, and the twelve animal heads are living instruments of torture, sealing the “Bronze Heart” at the planet's core!

Dragon scales burst through the skin of Jacques Beget, head of a French auction house. Radioactive dust spews from the animal-head display cases at the British Museum.

Lin Xuanjing, the godfather of Macau, injects mercury into his spine and awakens the cannon formation of the Twelve Golden Men beneath Mount Li.

Then the eyeball of Lu Zhaoye's grandfather, lodged in his left eye, suddenly howls: “Cut it out, quickly! The keyhole is in the navel of the Vairocana Buddha...”

Only when the animal heads' skeletons assemble into a starship in the Hall of Supreme Harmony at the Forbidden City does humanity understand the ultimate warning in their pupils:

“The day the Guixu Star Gate opens is the day civilization is delivered by cesarean section.”