Chen Mo, a folklorist, is forced to return to his shadow-haunted hometown, Qishui Hollow. A bizarre accident in his childhood took some of his memories and left him with a dangerous gift of “empathy”: he can sense the obsessions of the dead and fragments of their deaths, but the gift clings to him like a curse. Beneath its peaceful surface, the village follows ancient and brutal “yin laws,” while the living and spirits are bound together by invisible “yin pacts.”
Chen Mo makes knowledge his blade, using logic to reason through folk taboos. He risks awakening his gift to glimpse the truth, but in doing so, touches the village's deepest secret. The mysterious spirit medium Granny A Qi knows everything but keeps her lips sealed, while village chief Chen Kaijun does everything he can to preserve the bloodstained “balance.” Fragments of lost memories point to a terrifying yin pact that sustains the village, and Chen Mo himself may be a crucial link in the contract.
When forbidden ground is disturbed and sealed tragedies return, a terrifying force that upholds the yin laws begins to “correct” things. On the verge of collapse, Chen Mo must choose: inherit the shackles and become the new keeper of secrets, enduring eternal darkness, or wager everything to break the yin pact and face the disaster it unleashes? In a remote village in the southwest, steeped in ancient rituals and human struggles, every step Chen takes to unravel the mystery reveals a sealed secret more terrifying than ghosts or gods.
