In the twenty-fifth year of the Republic of China, Chen Sanxiao of the Chen family's shop in Xi'an had just celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday when the tips of his left fingers began to rot and sprout black hair. The “Blood River Curse” that had haunted his family for nine generations had awakened. His ancestors had accidentally destroyed Emperor Lizong of Song's Seven-Star Lamp of Longevity, earning them a vicious curse from the Imperial Astronomical Bureau: the living would suffer rotting flesh and hardened bones, and none would live past thirty-five; black smoke would rise from the dead's graves, bringing plague within a hundred li.
The only way to break the curse was to find the real Seven-Star Lamp left behind by Zhuge Liang. Carrying the Search for the Lamp Notes passed down through four generations of his family and armed with grave-robbing tools, Chen Sanxiao set out. In a Qin tomb in Binzhou, he battled a black-haired corpse demon wrapped in Qin brocade; in a Miao nest in Wuxi, he dodged scarlet flame poison that could burn through flesh; beneath Taihu Lake, he braved a whirlpool of water curtains that dragged people under; beside the hanging coffins of Sichuan, he evaded mountain winds that could freeze a man to death...
Along the way, he found three reliable companions: Qingfengzi of Mount Longhu, who could subdue corpses with talismans and a bell; A Duo of the Miao village, whose living poison worms in a bamboo basket could scout ahead; and Zhao Hu, a former Beiyang soldier whose broad-axe could smash through mechanisms. Together, the four traveled from Shaanxi to Lingnan, searching for clues and battling strange creatures in one perilous ancient tomb after another, all for the Seven-Star Lamp that could break the curse. But once they had gathered the lamp's wick, oil, and shade, they discovered that the path to breaking the curse concealed an even greater mystery about the tombs...
Beautiful, the author is awesome