Outside the rules
In Wutong Lane on a rainy night, Su Yan, the owner of Du'e Zhai, was wiping his thirty-seventh spiritual bone when a gold-plated invitation broke his silence for half his life. The soul-locking seal at the signature implicates the bloody mystery of the Shen family's annihilation twenty years ago, and also reveals his fate as a "soul-attractor".
The ceremony at the ancient house in the west of the city was a carefully arranged trap. There were nine guests, and under the rules of three living and six dead, the dormant house spirit, the strange walking corpse butler, and the black shadow with white plums embroidered on his sleeves took turns appearing. Su Yan entered the puzzle with a dagger engraved with the word "Wu", but met his old friend Shen Wan amidst numerous murderous intentions, and learned that he was actually the most critical chess piece in a century-old curse.
From sealing in the secret room to breaking the shackles of blood, from a century-old bet to fulfilling the promise of the first generation of the family, Su Yan gradually saw clearly: the so-called rules are never a cage of confinement; the so-called protection is not blind suppression.
When the dreammaker's puzzle unfolds, and the blood oath's backlash is approaching step by step, is the soul-drawer's inheritance a gift or a curse? The lights of Du'e Zhai flickered, and Su Yan clenched the jade pendant in his palm. What he wanted to cross was the soul of a wasted death, the obsession of sinking, and even more, himself wrapped up in fate.
