In the stormy days of the Guangxu period, Li Shisan, a knife loaner, walked on the land of the Qing Dynasty, carrying his ancestral notch kitchen knife on his back and following the guidance of the three-color cloth strip on the handle. His basket contains not only knives to be credited, but also hidden old accounts that have not been settled for three generations - the knife-shaped mark left by his grandfather during the Daoguang period, the mysterious account book entrusted to him by his father before his death, and the secret Gu trap set up by the Black Wind Hall over a hundred years.
From the Buddhist Gu nest in the Foxiang Pavilion to the beast Gu formation in the Shaman Temple outside the Pass, from the golden Gu mother worm in the Mohe Gold Mine to the poisonous Gu puzzle in the Jiangnan Gongyuan, Li Shisan took the young Gou Sheng and his father to follow the knife marks to track down the mysterious organization that uses Gu insects to control people's hearts, tamper with the context, and embezzle the land. The incense of Buddha hides the conspiracy to control the palace, the ore contains the greed that devours human lives, the examination papers contain poisonous plots that distort elegance, and in the opium vat of Thirteen Lines, the ultimate ambition of Black Wind Hall to stir up the world sleeps.
Every knife-shaped mark is a prophecy, and every credit knife contract is connected to life and death. When the leader of the Black Wind Hall revealed his true appearance as half human and half Gu, and when the dragon veins in the underground palace of the imperial mausoleum were about to become a nest of Gu, what three generations of credit swordsmen wrote with their blood and blades was not only an oath to settle accounts, but also the chivalry and perseverance hidden in folk fireworks. A hundred years have passed since the knife mark was scratched. Old accounts have not yet been settled, and new hatreds have arisen. The vibration of the notched kitchen knife is always a reminder: What is given out on credit is the knife, and what is to be returned is the right path in the world.
