Those Years I Spent Tomb Raiding in Guangxi

Wu Laole, a poor lad from Wuzhou, is forced to take up tomb raiding with the antique dealer Jinya Bing in order to save his seriously ill mother. He never expects his first trip into a tomb to lead him into an evil tomb filled with corpse-controlling magic, brought from western Hunan. He nearly ends up joining his ancestors after a cat startles a corpse into attacking. Then he unexpectedly awakens the ability to “taste and identify”: by licking an object, he can learn where it came from, but every time he uses it, he gets diarrhea for three days and nights!

From then on, he and his cowardly workmate from Liuzhou, Fatty, and A Mei, a sorceress from a Yao village in Baise, form an eccentric team and travel all across Guangxi. They encounter Nuo masks that possess people in the caves of Guilin, are chased and bitten by swarms of insects in a sinkhole in the Miao mountains, and face man-eating sea monkeys in a tomb beneath the Beibu Gulf… Behind one eerie ancient tomb after another lies a shocking secret about the King of Western Ou from the Warring States period.