In the eighth year of the Republic, in Shen Family Town, western Hunan, all fourteen members of the Shen Family Hall, a family of spirit mediums, were brutally murdered overnight. Only the eldest daughter, Shen Mo, survived. When she awoke, she was lying in a coffin, dressed in burial clothes with a copper coin in her mouth. At the head of her grave stood a tombstone bearing the words: "Shen Nian's Grave, of the Shen Family. Erected by the entire Shen family."
The townspeople accused her of being the killer. But she couldn't remember killing anyone, burying any bodies, or whose blood was under her fingernails. She remembered only three things: her grandfather saying before he died, "Mo'er, it wasn't your fault"; an old Daoist stopping her and saying, "There's something on you. It's been following you for three years"; and seeing her reflection smile in a bronze mirror when she herself had not smiled.
To prove her innocence, Shen Mo was forced to undergo the "Underworld Tribunal": for seven consecutive nights, her soul would enter Guanghe Tower and face every blood debt incurred by three generations of her family while collecting accounts for the underworld. On the first night, her mother's face split open, and a baby with thirteen faces crawled out. On the second, her father's head asked her, "What does your fiance, Gu Yuan, do?" On the third, Gu Yuan himself burst into the theater, but Shen Mo saw her reflection smiling in his eyes. That thing lived inside her body.
It was called the Yin Officer. It had guarded the great gate for three thousand years and forgotten its own name. Shen Mo called it Ashou. It said, "Three thousand years, and finally someone has called me by my name. That's enough."
But there was more than one thing behind the gate. One had been pushing for three thousand years, waiting for three thousand years, nameless and without a home.
The gate was still open, and no one had left. Another strand of white had appeared in Shen Mo's hair, but she smiled. Someone was waiting for her to come home.
