I’m twenty-eight, a geology student who never finished my degree, and through a twist of fate I stumbled into the tomb-raiding trade in the Northeast.
From Liao tombs in Jilin to Jin dynasty tombs in Inner Mongolia, from stone-piled tombs on Changbai Mountain to brick-chamber tombs along the western Liaoning corridor, I spent a full ten years digging through the black earth of the Northeast. I followed a self-taught, unorthodox master and worked alongside a ragtag crew of misfits.
Over those ten years, I met people more wicked than ghosts, and “ghosts” more reasonable than people.
I picked up a whole set of real skills: reading soil, probing burial chambers, and using geomancy to locate tombs. I also picked up a whole set of bad habits: bragging, cutting corners, and seeing money everywhere.
At our proudest, we were the wildest “research team” in all of Manchuria. At our lowest, we sat in a detention center blaming one another, and even had to share a single steamed bun.
This isn’t a legend. It’s what my life was like from twenty to thirty.
If you ask me what’s so interesting about this line of work,
I’d say it’s probably this:
You never know whether the next shovel will turn up an ancient tomb or an outhouse from the 1980s.
The novel is awesome and realistic.