Sun Jiu Chen, a folk-culture researcher at the Municipal Cultural Center, always dismissed his grandfather’s identity as a “spirit medium” as an old wives’ tale. That changed when his grandfather died suddenly and he found among his belongings a sandalwood token engraved with the words “Yuan Si,” along with the repeated warning: “Don’t let the things escape the town.”
The shadow monkey in the locust tree shattered the peace in the dead of night. The half-human evil spirit had skin like ashen, rotting flesh and a face full of eyeless black hollows. It stole children’s souls. When the six-year-old girl next door, Doudou, was dragged by the shadow monkey into a water vat and stood on the brink of death, the sandalwood token in Sun Jiu Chen’s palm suddenly blazed with scorching golden light. It destroyed the shadow monkey and shattered his understanding of “folk customs.”
But the crisis was far from over. Blood-red clouds suddenly covered the sky, pressing down until it was hard to breathe. From afar came the roars of enormous creatures that were not human. When golden light flashed, he glimpsed countless shadowy entities hiding in the corners of towns, forests, and seas. Only then did Sun Jiu Chen understand that his grandfather had not been protecting a single Yuan Si Town. He had been guarding the first line of defense against the arrival of global horrors. Now Sun Jiu Chen had been forced to shoulder the responsibility of “Yuan Si” and stand at the very front of this catastrophe.
