During Nanjing’s plum-rain season, Shen Yan has once again, for the Nth time, mounted a sheet of rice paper crookedly. But in Lao Mo’s secondhand bookstore, he touches a burning fragment of an ancient book.
The moment his fingertip brushes the words “Lei Zhenzi,” a vision explodes before his eyes: a blue-faced monster with electric arcs crackling from its wings is caught on the glass facade of Xinjiekou, and a red cord trails from the base of its wings, its end held by the fragment in his hand.
Lao Mo’s pipe suddenly snaps. “This paper seals the fates of gods and demons. If anything gets out, people will die.”
Only when a red-credentialed agent from the Wenyuan Pavilion slams an ID onto the table does Shen Yan understand: he was never restoring ancient books. He was uncovering a life-and-death game hidden in the city. But what secrets lie behind the “blood” seeping from the fragment, the totem on the metal cabinet, and the copper plaque his grandfather left behind?
