At dusk, fog rises. A damp, cold stench seeps from the crevices of Qingya Mountain's cliffs. A corpse driver passes through the mist, his peachwood staff's copper bell giving a clear chime as seven corpses follow on tiptoe, the yellow talismans on their foreheads strangely tinged with black.
Li Gousheng, a young shop assistant at the general store in Wangjia Hollow, is an ordinary villager. But after accidentally stumbling upon the corpse driver's eerie ritual, he is drawn into a struggle between sinister forces that has endured for a century. The warnings of Daoist Master Xuanqing of the Three Purities Temple, strange footprints in the woods on the western slope, sealing relics in an abandoned ancient village, and rumors of poisonous sorcery deep in the Miao village... Behind layer upon layer of mist lies a plot to break the seal on the Zombie King, or perhaps the fate of a bloodline passed down through generations.
From Wangjia Hollow to the Miao villages, from Soul-Locking Pool to Mistveil Town, from an underground dragon lair to secret deals in the Nether Market, every place harbors a folk legend: the ancient three-prohibitions rule of corpse driving in western Hunan, the struggle between good and evil in Miao sorcery, the mysteries of Daoist talismans used to suppress evil, and the bloody history behind the old town's taboos.
As the bloodline of a mountain guardian awakens within Li Gousheng, he stands alongside a Daoist master, a Miao village's holy maiden, and the leader of the corpse drivers. Amid desperate trials where corpse puppets besiege the city, poison gnaws at the heart, and illusions ensnare the mind, he searches for the truth behind the prophecy, "The dragon lair weeps blood, and evil rises at Qingya." On a land where cooking smoke mingles with eerie fog, he uses courage and steadfast resolve to protect the peace of ordinary people.
Rooted in folk traditions, this is a suspenseful epic. Every page is steeped in the strange secrets of the mountains, and every tale holds a struggle between human nature and fate. The fog over Qingya Mountain will eventually lift, but the justice and passion hidden among the people will never die out.
