When the rain and mist of western Hunan clung to half of a rusted bronze token, Shen Yan could make out only five words from his grandfather’s dying words: Seven-Star Lu Palace. It wasn’t until his fingertips touched the stone wall of the underground tomb that the mechanical voice of the Ancient Tomb Exploration System rang out in his mind. Only then did he realize that this journey to uncover his roots had long since become a deadly game.
He searched for dragon veins, located burial sites, and broke through vine traps. Antidotes warded off waves of corpse beetles. The danger level and mission progress flashing across the System panel became his only light in the pitch-black tomb passages. When he met Wu Xie, poring over his notes and asking questions; Fatty, swaggering around with a shovel; and Zhang Qiling, standing silently with his black-gold ancient blade, a new figure wielding an evil-slaying blade joined the Iron Triangle’s adventures. There was no romance, only the unspoken understanding of taking on traps and hacking down blood corpses side by side.
From the Taotie-patterned stone gate of Lu Palace, to the Forbidden Woman lurking in the undersea tomb at Xisha, and then the mind-bending illusions of the Qinling Sacred Tree, the evil-slaying talismans and Qilin blood extract redeemed through the System protected him as he drew closer to the truth hidden within layer upon layer of mysteries. The bronze fragments concealed not only the Shen family’s secret history, but also clues tied to the entire tomb-raiding world. This is my first time writing this kind of story, and it’s quite different from the original, so there isn’t much connection to it.
