Siheyuan: The Underground World of the Capital

(Tomb raiding + supernatural + jianghu) (Do not read this as referring to anyone in particular, and do not try any of this yourself.) In a Beijing courtyard in the 1980s, a battered old book unveils a shocking secret hidden beneath the bustle of everyday life.

Chen Mo only wants to look after his seriously ill grandmother, surrounded by the books filling their home, and live a quiet life in the courtyard. But when he is forced to sell an ancestral book to pay for her medicine, his unexpectedly keen eye catches the attention of the antique dealer Da Jinya, who lures him, half by coaxing and half by trickery, into the treacherous world of antiques.

From finding overlooked treasures at Panjiayuan to outwitting rivals on Liulichang Street, Chen Mo draws on his family’s legacy to make a name for himself. What he doesn’t know is that he has already been swept into a bottomless whirlpool. His seemingly ordinary neighbors all have their own agendas: the neighborhood office director covets his family’s property, the cool and beautiful doctor Su Qinghe, a descendant of the Moving Mountains faction, and the beautiful neighbor Qin Huairu keep a close eye on him, and even the deaf old lady who dozes all day seems to possess secret Moving Mountains techniques.

When a token connected to The Sixteen-Character Yin-Yang Feng Shui Secret Art comes to light, Chen Mo is forced to join forces with Hu Bayi and Wang Kaixuan, descendants of the Gold-Touching faction, and enter a dangerous ancient tomb for the first time. Only then does he discover that the courtyard where he lives is the focal point of a thousand-year-old feng shui formation, and that his inherited identity as a night watchman makes him the key to solving the mystery of the Muchen Pearl.

On one side are the open and covert struggles beneath the courtyard walls; on the other, the eerie perils of the underground world. How will Chen Mo use modern knowledge and traditional secret arts to protect his home while caught between competing forces? When Hu Bayi sends word from the Western Regions about the “Ghost Cave,” can Chen Mo still settle for life in this courtyard, where peace seems to have returned?