When Qi Liang uncovers the secret of the fourteenth lantern, the conspiracy lurking deep in the mountains of western Hunan finally comes to light. Ancient texts of the Chenzhou Talisman Sect record a bone-chilling truth: the flame in every soul-guiding lantern comes from the living souls stripped away by the forbidden art of “Taiyin Body Refining.” The remnant soul awakening inside Qi Liang belonged to a disciple of Yuan Tiangang, who presided over experiments on the living dead a thousand years ago.
As the “human-skin lantern” reveals more fragments of memory, a vast scheme spanning the Huang Chao Rebellion at the end of the Tang dynasty, assassinations by the Ming dynasty’s Jinyiwei, and the warlord conflicts of the Republican era gradually takes shape. The corpse drivers of western Hunan have, for generations, been guarding a “Three-Soul Lantern Array” meant to prolong the lives of emperors. When Qi Liang kindles the seventh flame of the soul, Japanese onmyoji suddenly appear to seize a bronze mask. They want more than the forbidden art: they need the “Blood Moon Prophecy” sealed inside the lanterns, which can control space and time.
From a workshop in the forbidden grounds of the Chenzhou Talisman Sect, where talismans are made from living people, to the crafting of flesh-and-bone Buddhas in Miaojiang witch villages, Qi Liang discovers that every eerie folk custom points to the same dark truth: the “Shadow-Walking Calamity” twenty years ago was merely the latest chapter in a living sacrifice ritual that has endured for a thousand years. And when all forty-nine lanterns are lit, Qi Liang will witness in a vision that he is the most crucial piece in the conspiracy. The soul sealed inside the fourteenth lantern was never someone else’s.
