The story follows Chen Xiu, a former detective who now repairs clocks. Three years ago, after his partner Lao Qiang was brutally killed, Chen Xiu retired and went into hiding under an assumed name in a clock shop on Siming Lane, hoping to leave the bloody past behind. But a bloodstained mantel clock delivered late one night drags him back into the abyss. The clock is connected not only to banker Zhou Shi’an’s bizarre death, but also conceals a deadly mechanism pointing to a death ritual known as the “Thirty-Three Night Banquet.” In this chapter, a nimble assassin attacks the clock shop at night. Chen Xiu calmly outmaneuvers and kills his attacker, but before dying, the assassin reveals the eerie name “Thirty-Three Night Banquet” and Chen Xiu’s former identity: “Lin Yin.” More unsettling still, the blood-soaked clock suddenly starts ticking on its own at midnight, as if the countdown to death has begun anew. Chen Xiu must race against time to uncover the bloody conspiracy hidden behind the gears before the next “Night Banquet” begins.
