In the twelfth year of the Republic, a shocking case of a "living corpse" surfaced in an ancient town in western Hunan. The victim sat upright in the main hall, wearing a sinister smile, while corpse maggots crawled beneath their skin. At the scene, Mao Shiba, an heir to the southern Maoshan tradition, found half of one of his family's talismans. Yet the bloody sigil on the wall was unmistakably the work of the northern Ma family.
Mao Shiba, who possesses Yin-Yang Eyes, sees something even more horrifying: the victim's soul has been nailed inside the corpse, and a figure in Qing dynasty official robes is sneering at him. As his investigation deepens, he discovers a connection to a secret long buried for a century: the southern Maoshan and northern Ma families once joined forces to seal the Xiangxi Corpse King. Now the descendants of those who took part are dying one after another in bizarre ways, each death corresponding to a lost corpse-driving art.
When Mao Shiba tracks the case to the northern Ma family, its current head, Ma Rulong, claims they are also searching for the culprit. More disturbing still, Mao Shiba's Yin-Yang Eyes are slipping beyond his control. Every midnight, he sees the same scene: a Taoist priest who looks exactly like him performing some kind of forbidden spell...
As more "living corpses" appear, Mao Shiba gradually realizes this is not merely revenge, but a shocking conspiracy a century in the making. When the final piece falls into place, he faces the cruelest truth of all: to stop the Corpse King from rising again, he must end his own "second life" with his own hands.
