[Folklore mystery and supernatural thrills | Forensic corpse reading | A rise from the depths of misfortune]
Jiang Lin is a down-on-his-luck forensic medicine student. Because his birth chart is extremely yin, he is tricked into going to a remote village and made the keeper of an incense-free shrine, in other words, a scapegoat meant to shield the entire village from disaster.
No one tells him that countless evil spirits are sealed beneath the shrine. No one warns him that every inch of the village is soaked in resentment. And no one knows that the ancestral Sixteen-Character Corpse-Reading Classic he inherited holds the ultimate secrets of the worlds of yin and yang.
With the sharp-tongued guidance of the shrine's old blind man, he grips his inherited, rusty surgical scalpel and takes an unconventional path to exorcising evil. He draws no talismans and recites no scriptures. He uses divination and geomancy to track down evil, dissection to break curses and settle karmic debts, the Five Elements and Eight Trigrams to lay out his plans, and his medical skills to sever lingering obsessions.
At first, he is schemed against by his clan, hunted by evil spirits, and looked down on by Daoist prodigies. With his life hanging by a thread, he has to watch every step. Later, he unravels the village's sinister mysteries, deciphers the feng shui of the city, and explores thousand-year-old tombs, transforming from a sacrificial offering at everyone's mercy into a guardian of secrets who commands the worlds of yin and yang.
Corpse readers, underworld messengers, paper effigy makers, and corpse drivers: an array of strange professions converge. Haunted village shrines, cursed city homes, forbidden Kunlun lands, and the abyss of the Nine Hells: eerie realms emerge one after another.
So what if his fate is incomplete? He dissects any evil that blocks his way and severs any karmic ties that ensnare him!
Jiang Lin stands with his scalpel in hand, the wails of a hundred ghosts reflected in his eyes. “From this day forward, I collect the bones on the road to the Yellow Springs, and I pass judgment in the realm between yin and yang!”
[Hardcore folklore in action | The ultimate underdog comeback | A deep dive into traditional culture | A battle of human nature against ghosts and gods]
