Lin Chenzhi, a folklorist whose left arm bears a suddenly painful Jiuli tattoo, follows half of a yellowed diary into the corpse-driving mountains of western Hunan in search of his missing grandfather and a way to break his family’s curse. Bi Kui, a former special forces soldier, is determined to uncover the supernatural truth behind the “puppet” that killed his father before his eyes when he was a child. A Bi, an heir to the Yi people’s Bimo tradition, tracks a mysterious organization called the Tomb Guardians with a spirit-communing bronze bell, hoping to find his kidnapped mother. The three end up working together by chance during a crisis in an underground palace, and are swept into a battle to protect civilization that spans a thousand years.
From the corpse-and-curse underground palace in the corpse-driving mountains of western Hunan to the wooden armor workshop in the hanging-coffin gorge of Bashu, from the mother-and-child Gu formation in the Gu King’s Valley of Lingnan to the golden-armored puppets of the Black City in the northwest, and from the merfolk mystery on Return to the Ruins Island in the South China Sea to the memory illusion of Ailao Mountain in western Yunnan, they follow clues to nine pieces of the “Nine Li Secret Key,” transmigrating through eight perilous hidden realms. Each piece holds a fragment of the ancient Nine Li civilization: the history of the schism between the Shamanic and Soul-Devouring sects, the true meaning of the secret art of “all things living in harmony,” and the Tomb Guardians’ leader, the Ghost Mask’s, plot to resurrect Chi You’s remnant soul.
When the keys unite to form the “Chi You Star Map,” the blood-jade coffin in the underground palace of Return to the Ruins trembles as if about to open. The truth behind the grandfather’s disappearance, the mother’s hidden loyalties, and the Ghost Mask’s true identity are revealed one by one. What began as an expedition driven by personal obsession becomes a redemption of civilization spanning two generations. They use the power of the earth’s veins to return the remnant soul to its place, awaken its mind with Bimo sorcery, and defeat the puppet army with their ingenuity. In the end, they preserve the Nine Li ideal that “secret arts should serve all people,” allowing the light of a thousand-year-old civilization living in harmony to shine through the gloom of the modern world.
