I’m Not Guarding a Tomb, I’m Guarding China’s Dragon Veins

“Classmate, what does your family do?”

“My family... watches over graves on Mangshan.”

Zhang Xuanxin lowered his head and shoveled food into his mouth as laughter rang in his ears.

No one knew that after school, he walked the Seven Stars Steps while patrolling seventy-two imperial tombs.

Even fewer knew that the battered bronze lamp in his schoolbag burned with a spark of Xirang, left behind when Yu the Great controlled the floods.

Until one day, the Yellow River turned black overnight, and avalanches in the Qinling Mountains raged for three days straight.

An onmyoji from the island nation used the “Hundred Ghosts Carry the Dragon” technique to steal the core of China's dragon vein.

Zhang Xuanxin crushed the protective talisman his grandfather had given him.

That night...

A Swiss bank froze a consortium's assets worth hundreds of billions.

The spirits depicted in the Dunhuang Mogao Caves mural “Defenders of the Hexi Frontier” flew out of the painting.

Deep in Mount Laojun in Luoyang, three thousand bronze swords burst from the ground and formed a sword formation that blotted out the sky.

And Song Wanqing, the transfer student who always followed him, ringing a little bell, undid her hair tie and transformed into the Dragon-Binding Rope bestowed upon the Zhang family by the Zhou king.

“Report! An unidentified armed force has appeared in the Mangshan region!”

“That's no armed force.” The director of the Ministry of State Security lowered his binoculars, his voice trembling.

“Those are three thousand terracotta soldiers... marching out of the Zhang family ancestral tombs.”