While everyone else was hustling for jobs at major corporations after graduation, I got “hired” by the Fox Immortal.
I’m Ma Yiming, a Northeastern college student who firmly believes in science. But one phone call from my dad sent me roaring back to my hometown to take over a nearly bankrupt shamanic shrine. On my first day, my whole worldview shattered: the dusty statue of the Fox Immortal on the altar actually winked at me, then grinned.
The truly bizarre stuff came later. Before I’d even learned how to summon the spirits, one strange case after another came knocking in the capital: shadows stalking the Forbidden City at night, a top-tier star plagued by evil spirits, bizarre happenings in a wealthy household... These “supernatural assignments” that money and science couldn’t fix were all coming straight for me, a half-trained young shaman from the Northeast.
So I formed hand seals and summoned spirits with my left hand, learned to make Excel spreadsheets with my right, and barged into the capital’s cutthroat world of fame and fortune with a few eccentric old immortals from my shrine: the Fox Immortal, who loved smoking a pipe and quitting at the drop of a hat; the Snake Immortal, obsessed with melodramas; and my revered Ancestor Bei, who nagged me to buy a new phone every day.
From the black soil of the Northeast to the neon-lit maze of the capital, I handled one hair-raising yet laughable “special assignment” after another, caught between science and the supernatural. Then a long-buried case came to light, and I discovered that every strange incident pointed back to the unremarkable old shrine my family ran...
See how a modern young man uses the most unscientific methods to solve the capital’s toughest “unscientific” problems.
Who says being a shaman has no future? This time, I’ll make every demon and spirit in the capital hear what the “immortals” from the black soil of the Northeast have to say.
