River Tamer

The mighty Yellow River swallows more than mud and sand. It also consumes countless secrets and lost souls. Chen Qiu comes from a family of corpse retrievers, but he is determined to escape his fate and become a forensic pathologist in the city. Then a body washed ashore, marked with an ancient seal, drags him back into the vortex of destiny.

Forced to take up his family’s traditional corpse-retrieval rope once more, he enters a bizarre world where modern technology intertwines with ancient taboos. The whispers of the dead coming through his phone, a blood-red curse triggered by an influencer’s livestream, a thousand-year-old jade corpse entombed beneath a sunken ship… There is far more beneath the Yellow River than meets the eye. A curse that has endured for a thousand years awakens in his blood: the family’s men must serve as corpse retrievers for generations, guarding the river until they die.

As bizarre cases such as “Nine Corpses Welcome the Guests” and “The Dragon Gate Opens” erupt one after another, Chen Qiu discovers a folded space known as the “Nine Provinces Beneath the Waters” hidden at the bottom of the Yellow River. Within it lie ancient battlefields, sunken cities, and the ghost of an emperor bent on upending the balance between yin and yang. Joining forces with Su Cen, an official investigator, and Zhang Jiuyue, a descendant of the Mountain Shifters, Chen Qiu grows from a passive guardian into a breaker of deadlocks, determined to uncover the truth.

When the ultimate shadow of the Netherworld Emperor awakens and seeks to overturn the world’s waterways, Chen Qiu stands at the crossroads of fate. Should he end the bloodline curse once and for all, or inherit his destiny and guard the great river alone? He makes a third choice: rewrite the pact, transforming a solitary guardian’s duty into a promise to watch over all.

This is the epic of a river, and the story of one man who breaks free from fate to forge a new path to peace for countless dead and living souls alike.