Li Tiansheng of Xiangzhou County, Guangxi, is the barefoot doctor whom everyone in the village respects. His medicine box holds herbs, but it also conceals a secret no one knows.
At twenty-three, on the day of Jingzhe, he suddenly collapsed in a rice paddy. When he opened his eyes again, he was holding a cold copper hammer, and a voice beside him said, "It's time to report for duty."
From then on, he saves lives by day, bringing warmth to the everyday world with needles and herbal medicine. At night, or while working in the fields, an invisible command sends him collapsing into sleep. He has become a ghost official under the King of Hell, using the Book of Life and Death to claim souls and traveling between the worlds of the living and the dead aboard an underworld flying vessel.
To claim a soul, he must strike with the golden hammer. If he encounters a tough soul with a powerful aura of life, he'll be punished. Even his own father's and father-in-law's souls are transformed by the King of Hell into livestock for him to dispatch. He watches strong men whose lifespans have run out get pushed into the river, and sees familiar names appear in the Book of Life and Death. The medicine box and copper hammer in his hands burn against his heart.
After forty years of serving as a ghost official while still alive, he can no longer tell whether he belongs to the human world as Tiansheng, or to the underworld as a "night wanderer."
