On the stone stele in Luoxing Village in the southwest, three horrifying taboos are carved: no iron tools, no drinking from the well at midnight, and no keeping a Tai Sui in secret.
Lin Xia arrives with half a bronze talisman. At noon, the village is so silent that only her heartbeat can be heard. The village guardian, Old Zhou, eyes her watch warily. "Iron tools offend the Tai Sui. Outsiders shouldn't be here."
Ten years ago, her father, Lin Jianguo, went into the mountains searching for a "Tai Sui that could cure asthma" and never returned. Three years ago, the court declared him dead, but her mother clutched his photo and refused to believe it. "That piece of paper can't make him dead in my heart." Now her mother is gone, leaving behind the bronze talisman and half a final message: "The talisman is split in two. When the halves are joined, the truth will be revealed."
Strange events follow one after another. At a ritual to summon spirits, the guide keeps counting paper offerings, and an unfamiliar star map is hidden in his pupils. A Nuo opera mask goes out of control and injures people, its inner metal contacts glowing blue. In the middle of the night, a coffin in a century-old house begins knocking, but inside there is only a black meteorite.
Lin Xia gradually realizes that the Tai Sui was never a medicinal herb. The "mirror space" and "symbiote" in her father's notebook eerily match the village legends.
When Old Zhou warns her, "You'll become a missing person just like your father," the stench in the wind suddenly grows stronger. Deep in the Tai Sui ruins behind the village, something seems to be slowly awakening along the patterns on the bronze talisman.
This is a tangle of obsession and taboos, and a sci-fi mystery wrapped in folk customs: the ancient legends you see may be codes from a future civilization, and the truth you seek lies within the "living thing" you are most afraid to touch.
