Dunhuang, 1936.
Detective Lu Chen has a secret ability: when his hand touches a dead person's flesh, he sees what the victim saw in the final three seconds before dying.
The price is that he feels the pain of whatever killed them.
A woman's corpse is found outside the caves, hanging upside down like a flying apsara, with lapis-blue blood seeping from her back. When Lu Chen touches the body and sees its final memories, he sees a pair of eyes: narrow and cold, like the “inhuman” eyes described in Buddhist scripture. They are the same eyes as those of the serial killer who shot at him six years ago.
As he investigates, he uncovers an old case file from 1930. It was written by Lin Mo, a lecturer at Yanjing University who mysteriously disappeared while investigating a case in Dunhuang. The last page of the file contains only one line:
“The killer will return, bringing a child.”
Even stranger, tucked inside the file is a note dated today.
Following the clues, Lu Chen finds Su Mi, a young woman from a family that has restored murals for generations. A birthmark on her back resembles a map, pointing to a cave in the northern part of the Mogao Caves that does not exist. The mark was tattooed with cinnabar, part of a secret passed down for three hundred years.
Working together, they discover that the killer is Gao Yuan, a scholar who has lived for an unknown number of years, using the hearts of living people to change bodies once every twenty years. He arranges crime scenes into diagrams of the six paths of reincarnation and feeds the murals paint mixed with human blood, waiting for the day they devour reality.
At the end of the chase, Gao Yuan says one thing to Lu Chen:
“I’m your father. The offering that gave you your ability was planted in your bones when you were a child.”
Lu Chen cuts off his right arm, cuts away his tattoo, and severs the curse passed down through his bloodline. Su Mi walks into the mural and seals herself inside the wall, becoming the new master of the corpse forest…
Engaging story.