My name is Wu Qing, a young man studying Taoist arts under my master.
My master says the things in this world fall into three categories: things you can talk about, things you can't talk about, and things nobody will believe even if you do.
Everything I've encountered belongs to the third kind.
It began with a baby carriage that appeared out of nowhere on a snowy mountain in the dead of night. A resentment that had been building for more than a decade latched onto me, and I became the target of a “substitute.”
Zaxi crawled out of a sea of flames with scars on his face. For thirty years, he had pursued the same group of people. The ones in red monk's robes said, “Cast off the flesh and become a Buddha here and now.” They sent his parents into the fire, and they never came out.
We ventured deep into Guoluo, into a valley that devours people. There stood a golden temple that appeared from nowhere, monks with laughing eyes set into their doorframes, and a mirror whose frame was studded with human bones.
And there was that child, Chen Che. For more than a decade, he'd been forged into a “soul-binding stake.” I dug him out and nourished him with incense offerings. At last, before that mirror, he spoke his first words: “Wu Qing.”
This is not simply a horror novel.
It's a story about being unable to leave, and having to keep going anyway.
The geomancy of the Northwest, cults of the Tibetan regions, Taoist sects of the Central Plains, folk Lu Ban arts, tomb raiders of the Qinling Mountains, and spirit mediums of the Northeast...
This land holds too many things you've heard of but never believed, believed in but never seen, or seen but never dared to speak of.
This land hides a world you've never seen before.
