The Yin Officer's Portraitist

Gu Chuan, an embalmer at a funeral home, has the unusual ability to see the final memories of the dead. Though he has spent three years growing accustomed to life and death, a woman’s corpse dredged from the river draws him into a fateful entanglement spanning thirty years. Hidden in the corpse’s mouth is a marriage contract, and the birth details written at the bottom are Gu Chuan’s own. The bloody words on the back, “I’ve been waiting for you for thirty years,” tear open the mystery of his origins.

Guided by his master, Gu Chuan opens the long-sealed Records of Netherworld Embalming and learns that this is a death omen: a water ghost is taking a bride. His fate was bound long ago to the tragedy that struck Wanfuzhen thirty years earlier. Back then, disaster struck as the town built a bridge. A geomancer’s words, “Sacrifice three thousand people to stabilize the bridge,” turned the town into a living hell, and three thousand wronged souls sank to the riverbed. Only then does Gu Chuan learn that he is no orphan: he was the child deliberately saved during that tragedy. The woman’s corpse is his sister, Gu Xiaoxi, who has been waiting for him for thirty years.

The three thousand wronged souls use his sister’s body to claim their kin, and Gu Chuan is given seven days to live. The only way to end the calamity is to willingly take his sister’s place and guard the riverbed forever. Over those seven days, Gu Chuan uncovers the truth piece by piece, learning of his master’s sacrifice and the obsession of the mysterious old Taoist, Lao Zhao. He also comes to understand his sister’s loneliness and despair after being trapped beneath the water for thirty years. In the end, he chooses to give his life to free the three thousand souls and leaps into the river. But at the riverbed, the young embalmer Song Yang takes his place at the cost of his own life, allowing Gu Chuan to return to the land of the living.

Back among the living, Gu Chuan bears the three prohibitions of the Records of Netherworld Embalming. Yet in an unfamiliar small town, he encounters Song Yin, Song Yang’s younger brother. A dream message from Song Yang, “Look after my brother,” leads Gu Chuan to break the rules and enter Song Yin’s embalming studio. The fate of the underworld’s painter of the dead has only just begun to unfold.