The Northern Ma Don't Offer Incense

“Mao in the South, Ma in the North”: in the north, there is the Ma family of demon hunters, while in the south, there is the Heavenly Path sect of Mao Xiaofang, a generation-defining Taoist master of the undead. But my grandmother, Ma, personally smashed our family’s century-old ancestral altar and left a blood curse in my palm: “Never offer incense again.” Ten years later, I became a detective, but a series of bizarre cases involving blood talismans dragged me back into the world I had abandoned. Every victim had the exact same blood talisman branded on their back as the one my grandmother had made all those years ago. During the investigation, I met Mao Xiaofang, a Maoshan Taoist from the south. We joined forces to hunt down the killer, but at the suspect’s home, where the evidence led us, we found incense, candles, and cinnabar unique to the Ma family. What chilled me to the bone even more was hearing the captain I trusted most say behind me: “Your grandmother deceived everyone. The Ma family’s real ancestral altar was never smashed.” To uncover the truth, I had no choice but to defy the blood curse and touch the power I had sealed away. Mao Xiaofang and I, one an heir to the Northern Ma tradition, the other an orthodox Southern Maoshan Taoist, were strangers with vastly different beliefs, forced to walk side by side into the depths of the mist. Waiting for us was not only the real culprit behind the string of bloody cases, but also a century-old, world-shaking secret about the Ma family’s hidden altar, one my grandmother had given her life to conceal.