A Noble Daughter's Glory: Hei Xiazi and Zhang Qiling in Republican-Era China

In 1925, deep in the Changbai Mountains, Hei Xiazi tracks a Japanese tomb-raiding group searching for the “secret of immortality” and is forced to enter a forbidden site guarded by his family for generations. At the same time, Zhang Qiling follows a bronze fragment tied to the secrets of the Zhang family, approaching the same tomb from another direction.

They meet inside the tomb, each wary of the other. After accidentally triggering a mechanism, they both see a woman from the Qing dynasty asleep in a crystal coffin, her face lifelike, dressed in ceremonial robes embroidered with dragons and surrounded by a strange, lingering scent of poison. Stranger still, when the two men draw near, the jade pendant on Zhaoyue’s chest, Hei Xiazi’s ancestral ring, and Zhang Qiling’s bronze bell all begin to glow.