New Year's Eve, 2026, the Year of the Fire Horse.
An archaeological team ventured deep into the ruins of “Zangma River” in the Northwest. After discovering a bronze tally inscribed with the words “Bingwu Imperial Horse Bureau,” the entire team mysteriously vanished. The only clue was a chilling warning in Professor Wang's journal: “Don't look into their eyes.”
Veteran Chen Chuan and archaeologist Lin Wan are ordered to investigate. On the night they arrive, just after midnight, dense hoofbeats like a torrential downpour sound around the camp. Eerie bare hoofprints appear on the ground, while the tent walls show only the shadows of cavalry in formation: no bodies, no light source, only a gaze watching from the depths of the darkness.
Forced to enter a grave-robbing tunnel, they discover that something beyond comprehension awaits deep inside the tomb passage: the tomb of Zhu Youlian, the Ming Dynasty's Prince of Zhenxi, is actually a “factory of shadow soldiers” where living people are turned into clay figures. Every sixty years, when the stars of the Year of the Fire Horse return to their proper alignment, some of the tomb's three thousand clay cavalrymen awaken. Worse still, the figures of the archaeological team members have appeared among their ranks...
The time curse has begun. From New Year's Eve to the Lantern Festival, the shadow soldiers will fully awaken as the astral power grows stronger over the course of fifteen days. Chen Chuan and Lin Wan must uncover the bloody truth behind the “Bingwu Seal” while evading ancient mechanisms and hunting animated clay figures, and destroy this life-devouring tomb before the next sixty-year cycle begins.
But when they finally draw near to the core, they discover that the greatest horror does not come from the depths of the tomb...
Anyone who enters Zangma River might become a new member of the shadow soldiers' ranks.
Because in this tomb, “leaving alive” is not
The plot has twists and turns, and it's not bad. It's probably been a long time since I've read such a wonderful novel after Tomb Raiders, especially in the later stages.