In the twenty-sixth year of the Republic, a strange dried corpse was found at Heifeng Pass in Yinshan. It clutched a bronze plaque bearing a three-legged bird, and the blood-red words of its final letter were chilling: “If the Mystic Coffin is opened, ten thousand corpses will rise. I should never have opened it!”
Sixty years later, Chen Jiu, a small-time antique dealer in Panjiayuan, receives the bronze plaque. His grandfather goes pale at the sight and reveals the truth he had hidden all these years: that night, he saw the dried corpse open its eyes.
From then on, Chen Jiu is swept into a fate spanning a thousand years. Born with Yin-Yang Eyes, he assembles an expedition team with Zhang Tan, a taciturn man; Wang Pangzi, a reliable chatterbox; and Shen Nian, a master's student in archaeology. From the “Bronze Eye” beneath the faceless murals of Yinshan to the city of earth wraiths in Kunlun's Valley of Death, they gradually close in on the legendary Kunlun Ruins: nine hundred-foot bronze dragons drag a black stone coffin with chains, the Nine Nether Dragon Coffin.
Star maps cover the coffin, and countless names are etched into the dragons' bodies: the coffin keepers of every dynasty. Chen Jiu finds his grandfather, along with his father, who disappeared eighteen years ago.
Nine dragon talismans open the coffin. Inside are no bones, but a staircase leading to the heart of the earth. Deep underground, an ancient city hangs upside down, preserving the secrets of Earth's many cycles of civilization, destruction, and rebirth.
The even more shocking truth is that Zhang Tan is a reincarnated soul from the previous era of civilization; his father's “death” was part of an eighteen-year wait; and Chen Jiu's Yin-Yang Eyes are the key to unlocking the seed of civilization.
Open it, and modern civilization may be overturned. Leave it shut, and the truth will remain buried in the abyss.
Who, exactly, lies buried in the Nine Nether Dragon Coffin? With a thousand-year fate weighing on his shoulders, Chen Jiu finally understands: some secrets are heavier than death.
