Chen Yan is twenty-four and scrapes by working at a funeral home in the old part of town. He has seen more than his share of death and doesn’t believe in ghosts or gods. But on a freezing night, he picks up half of a pitch-black, ice-cold Underworld Constable’s Token, and is forcibly bound to the role of “acting Underworld Constable in the human world,” plunging into the terrifying depths where yin and yang meet.
He has no magical arts or immortal techniques, no divine weapons. All he has is a broken Underworld Constable’s Token, a soul-locking chain, and a Yin-Sight Eye that can see through evil spirits. Forced to walk through the city’s shadows every night, he encounters a water demon clutching a baby and weeping blood in an abandoned unfinished tower; a headless spirit endlessly searching for its way on a night bus; a resentful fetal spirit devouring yang energy in an abandoned hospital; a starving demon hiding in the cracks between walls in an urban village; and a hanged ghost seeking revenge in an old mansion... One hundred and eight bizarre cases, one hundred and eight bloody, tearful obsessions. Behind every evil ghost lies a human tragedy buried from view, and every ghost hunt is a deadly contest that brings him face-to-face with death.
Resentment eats into his bones, yin evil clings to him, and ghostly shadows follow him. One misstep could leave him utterly destroyed, his soul scattered and his body reduced to blood. Chen Yan goes from struggling with fear to carrying out his duties under the token. As he binds souls and guides the dead through calamity, he uncovers one dark secret after another, gradually draws closer to the truth of the cursed fate that haunts him, and stumbles upon a shocking conspiracy spanning both worlds, one that feeds evil with the living and uses ten thousand souls as sacrifices.
The Underworld is absent, the human world has no master, evil ghosts run rampant, and malice lurks in human hearts.
With a mortal body and the Underworld Constable’s Token in hand, he guards the boundary between yin and yang, hunts evil spirits in every corner, and guides the lingering souls of the world onward.
The long night never ends, and ghostly shadows crowd around him. Once he sets foot on this path of collecting ghostly lives, there is no turning back.
