Chen Yuan, 24, food delivery rider and part-time Taoist priest.
Before his master, Zhang Mazi, died, he left him three things: a leaky shop that sells funeral wreaths, a box of yellowed old books, and 63,000 yuan in debt. To pay it off, Chen Yuan puts on his yellow delivery vest and starts making deliveries. He hopes to scrape by on the job, but soon discovers that his “customers” are getting stranger and stranger.
A family in the old town has lost three dogs in six months. When Chen Yuan glances over while delivering food, he realizes the neighbor’s renovations disturbed a malignant feng shui position. Lin Xiaoman, an embalmer at the funeral home, always places orders late at night and asks him to check on the people in the morgue who have “been lying there for three days and still won’t close their eyes.” Some have water seeping into their ancestral graves; others have homes built across a fault line. Orders from an office tower at three in the morning always say, “Just leave it on the ground.” Chen Yuan knows not to knock on the door for those orders, but he has to draw a circle on the ground and let the “customer” come out to collect the food.
Feng shui is about making sure the living feel at ease in their homes; exorcism is about ensuring the dead can move on in peace. Chen Yuan does both, adjusting the layout for the living while sending the dead on their way.
Meanwhile, a rider wearing the same yellow vest keeps appearing in his rearview mirror. Three cars away, the rider’s face is impossible to make out. Old Liu tells him that his master had a rival when he was young, a man surnamed Zhou. Their families have fought for six generations. His master won back then, but the price was twenty years of his life. Now the warding barrier is about to crumble, and it’s time for the next generation to settle the score.
On one side, debts he can’t pay off; on the other, a man he can’t avoid. Chen Yuan can only ride his electric scooter back and forth through this city’s days and nights.
Delivering food is his job, feng shui is his skill, and exorcism is his duty. When all of this gets mixed together
