In my unremarkable tattoo shop, the rules matter more than life.
One: No deities or Buddhas. It's easy to invite them in, but hard to send them away.
Two: No tattoos of the dead. Their spirits will haunt you without end.
Three, and most important: Never tattoo a design “it” has chosen.
But one night, a woman soaked to the skin came to me in tears, begging me to tattoo her with a “Ghost Reaper Claiming a Life” design to save her. I broke the rules. The moment I drove cinnabar mixed with the blood from my fingertip into her skin, I heard chains dragging across the floor.
My name is Lin Mo, the last heir of the Yin Tattoo lineage. I can tattoo people with demons, deities, and spirits from the underworld, borrowing their power to suppress evil. But every design comes at a price, whether years of life or the loss of a loved one. This is the fate known as the “Five Flaws and Three Deficiencies.”
I thought I could survive by keeping to the rules, until my brother was possessed by baleful energy because of the Zhong Kui tattoo I gave him, and the girl I loved was surrounded by a hundred ghosts because of her “yin-yang eyes.” Only then did I understand: the chains I heard that night had bound no one but me.
An evil god who should have died a hundred years ago is watching this world through countless “yin tattoos” of its choosing. The forbidden totem left by my founding master on my chest, which I have never dared reveal, is the only key it needs.
As the gates of the underworld slowly swing open, will I use this body to become a savior, or... fall into the Asura Path, more terrifying than any ghost?
