Strange Tales of Great Ming: The Thousand-Mechanism Lock and the Evil-Calamity

A Brief Introduction to The Ming Dynasty Strange Tales: Calamity of the Thousand-Mechanism Lock

“One lock binds four blood debts; four people embark on the same path to change their fates, with no way back.”

Synopsis

Late in the Jiajing reign of the Ming dynasty, corpses rise overnight in the capital's Silver Bureau. A Ryukyuan shamaness vomits blood after crossing the sea, the bones of an Imperial Guardsman are eaten away by molten silver, and a prisoner from the Imperial Astronomical Bureau carries a star chart that can rewrite destiny. Though the four have never met, a legendary Thousand-Mechanism Lock said to “bind yin and yang, and alter life and death” forcibly ties them together.

The lock has four components: the Artisan's Soul, the Warrior's Bone, the Shaman's Spirit, and the Sin's Core. Each is embedded in one of their bodies.

To survive, they must assemble the lock. But every time they fit a piece into place, they lose a memory, a thread of affection, or even a life.

They travel from the imperial capital of the mortal realm down to the Netherworld's River of Forgetfulness;

They forge silver bones anew at the Skinning Pavilion and borrow a blade to buy their lives at the Bridge of Helplessness;

In the end, they discover that the lock holds no path to survival. It leads instead to a sacrifice written long ago.

What the Thousand-Mechanism Lock was truly meant to bind was none other than the fate of the Ming dynasty itself.

Change fate against the heavens?

It can be done.

The price: the four lands united in purpose, and all four dead.