Before my grandfather died, he pressed a cold, wet black handprint onto my back. He said that in forty-nine days, something would crawl up my spine, peel off my face, and take over my life. My only chance of survival was to find his old partner from thirty years ago and return to the demon tomb beneath Blackwater Pool in western Hunan. There, I saw a faceless coffin guardian behind a bronze door and swallowed a tiny figure made of blood, identical to me, from a dragon’s mouth. From then on, I embarked on a desperate quest to collect the “Thirteen Ancient Souls.” A ghost ship sailing upside down on the Yellow River, the twin royal corpses beneath Sanxingdui, the ghost mother devouring infants in a Western Zhou blood pool... One by one, sealed lands of terror opened before me. Gradually, I realized that the soul I was meant to reclaim was my own. And the “thing” that had waited three thousand years for me wanted more than just my face... It wanted my entire life as a “vessel.”
