Wang Yue, twenty-three, is a food delivery driver with a birth chart made entirely of yin elements.
Late one night, he takes a delivery with a 200-yuan fee. The address is No. 444 Huangquan Road. After climbing seventeen floors, the customer hands him a bronze pen and calls him a “yin-yang courier.” Wang Yue doesn’t believe him. He takes the money and leaves.
He thinks it will be his last trip to No. 444 Huangquan Road.
But the next day, he’s back.
And the day after that, he’s back again.
Only later does he figure it out: he isn’t there to deliver food. He’s there to work. He’s on the underworld’s payroll, handling the messes between the worlds of the living and the dead that no one else will touch. The pay is good, but the risks are even greater. One job at Shen Garden nearly gets him shot; another in an air-raid shelter almost gets him torn apart by a ghost.
Even stranger, he realizes that something is off about everyone around him. His childhood friend Zhang Guo suddenly conjures a pair of golden maces in the middle of a fight. A nurse at the hospital, whose eyes curve into crescents when she smiles, makes his heart ache as if he owes her centuries of love. And the gray-robed monk who keeps appearing at crucial moments always shows up at just the right time, yet refuses to say anything more.
Wang Yue has no idea who these people really are.
All he knows is that he keeps making more and more deliveries, while the figure standing beneath the plum tree in his memories grows clearer by the day. The identities awakening within him, one after another, seem to be greater than the last.
