Legend has it that Yu the Great cast the Nine Tripods to guard the dragon veins of the Nine Provinces. They vanished sometime after the Zhou dynasty, becoming an age-old mystery.
I, Miao Yifang, come from a family of antiquities hunters. Along with my wisecracking brother Meng Pangzi and Zhou Ziyue, a Peking University master's graduate obsessed with ancient writing, I used to be part of an ordinary “trio” in Panjiayuan. But a mysterious fragment of bronze plunged us into a whirlpool of clues leading to the Nine Tripods.
From the underwater “Guixu” beneath Baidi City to an ancient Dian kingdom temple deep in the Ailao Mountains, we encountered the legendary nine-headed serpent Xiangliu, met “treasure hoarders” who summoned lightning to hunt dragons, and made the acquaintance of all kinds of extraordinary figures from the jianghu through countless brushes with death. Yet as the secrets of the Nine Tripods gradually came to light, an ancient mystery that overturned everything we knew emerged, and the convictions of the three of us began to waver.
In the end, crushed by the revelations and our disagreements, Zhou Ziyue chose to leave alone, disappearing into the vast sea of humanity with the secret weighing on him. After enduring betrayal and uncertainty, Pangzi and I resolutely set out on a new journey, not only to unravel the mystery of the Nine Tripods, but also to find the brother we once knew. The road ahead is long. What awaits us: even more sinister conspiracies, or a fate that was written long ago?
Well written and logically clear