Wu Chuan is unexpectedly caught up in a bizarre disturbance surrounding the Tomb of the River-Quelling Marquis. By chance, he picks up a bronze talisman plaque at a junkyard, and from then on a river spirit haunts him, while a strange red rash shaped like the character for “water” appears on his arm. To break the curse, he follows his experienced Third Uncle, Wu San, on a perilous journey to investigate a coffin submerged in the Blackwater River, the live sacrifice at Broken Dragon Cliff, and the bell-ringing coffin in the underground river.
The tomb conceals a shocking secret from three hundred years ago: the River-Quelling Marquis was not the celebrated official who tamed the floods in legend, but an ambitious man who raised river spirits with corpse beetles and sought to turn the underground river into a breeding ground for the dead. In the ancient tomb, Wu Chuan and his uncle encounter living corpses, corpse-beetle puppets, and the spectral shadows of river spirits. They also discover that every step of their expedition seems to have been anticipated by the tomb's master: from the copper fish tally held by the blind old man in the ghost market to the descendants of the tomb guardians who sacrifice themselves at Broken Dragon Cliff, everything forms a sacrificial loop of “three entries and three exits.”
When Wu Chuan discovers that the fish-shaped mark on his arm is the key to opening the real tomb, when the living corpse inside the bronze coffin rings the soul-summoning bell, and when the joined jade cong casts golden light over the conspiracy hidden in the depths of the underground river, he finally understands: what they call tomb raiding is nothing more than a century-spanning “closing of the net” laid by the tomb's master. And they, the intruders, have long been the chosen “sacrifices.”
