Jiang Che, a 26-year-old retired fighting instructor, returned to his hometown to take over the "Shouyi Thrift Store" left by his grandfather Jiang Shouyi, but he bumped into a woman wearing a Republican cheongsam asking for a hairpin at midnight - this was the beginning of his exposure to "exotic". Grandpa was not missing, but was taken away by a group of members of the "Bone Erosion Society" wearing bronze masks, leaving behind only the ancestral compass, the ink fountain, and a "Notes on Preventing Objects" that recorded the three techniques of "distinguishing qi, sealing off towns, and resolving disasters."
Underneath the prosperity of Jiangcheng lies the secret of cannibalism: strange stories about the rules of abandoned brick kilns, echoing curses in old alleys, shadowy afterimages in subway tunnels, midnight elevators in the campus laboratory building... Every strange event is linked to the clues left by Grandpa, and is also connected to the polluted "yin vein" underground.
Jiang Che relies on military fighting skills to defeat the filthy, and relies on folklore knowledge to decipher the rules. He meets Su Wanqing, a graduate student in folklore, and Lu Zheng, an agent from the Bureau of Abnormal Phenomenon Control, and gets closer to the truth step by step - his grandfather is a reclusive treasure hunter.
From looking for his grandfather to guarding Jiangcheng, the ink rope tied up evil spirits, the compass pointed the way, and his fists defeated the conspiracy. Jiang Che will finally take over his grandfather's mission: to suppress the filth and evil in people's hearts.
