After his grandfather died, Xie An’s world collapsed.
All that was left to him was a grotesque Nuo mask and a cryptic final message: “The time has come. ‘They’ are about to awaken.”
On the night of the funeral, in the dead silence of a rainy evening, he and his childhood friend Liu Yaowen were dragged into a bizarre game called [Underworld Online].
An abandoned village shrine, a deserted opera troupe, a ghost wedding... One by one, deadly scenarios built around China’s intangible cultural heritage and folk traditions unfolded before them.
Here, those who cleared a scenario earned three days to catch their breath. Those who failed would be damned to the underworld forever.
Xie An discovered that his knowledge of traditional arts had become his only path to survival:
The Nuo mask borrowed divine power, paper-cutting opened a passage to the netherworld, and shadow puppets manipulated reality and illusion.
Meanwhile, his portly friend Xiaopang had somehow maxed out the eerie skills of his family’s ancestral cooking:
A soul-awakening clear noodle soup dispelled illusions, explosively spicy chicken burned evil spirits, and soul-subduing Eight Treasure Rice sealed spirits within a barrier!
They could venture willingly into the abyss, gambling on a sliver of hope for survival.
They could seal a blood pact and form a life-or-death team of no more than three.
When ancient arts became weapons against despair,
when the belief that food is the people’s greatest need endured amid the uncanny
