Death isn’t the end. It’s the beginning of his accidental journey into the underworld among the stars.
While saving a girl he didn’t know, Wang Mo was sent flying, landing beside the shredded paper bag that had held a birthday present. When he opened his eyes again, he was clutching an unsent cashmere cardigan and standing alone on a midnight street. He boarded a driverless bus and headed for one last meal at a place called the Last Stop Hotel.
Here, the dead register their names and eat in silence.
Here, the starry sky is the roof, and Earth is a blue dot receding into the distance.
Here, the road to the underworld climbs upward, straight into Jupiter’s storm eye. The soul-devouring forest whispers beside the road, while the soul-scouring winds of Wild Dog Ridge never stop blowing.
The Taoist priest says he is a rare “living soul”: his body is still alive, but the way back has been severed.
The priest also says that the birthday present for his mother in his arms is a “thought relic,” born of his obsession. In the underworld, it is both a talisman that can save his life and a curse that can bring about his death. Evil spirits covet it, and even the King of Hell has taken notice.
Meanwhile, at a hospital in the world of the living:
His mother watches over her son in a vegetative state. His sister’s boyfriend brings in a spirit medium, and the police discover something on the security footage: at the instant of the crash, the paper bag holding the present vanished into thin air before everyone’s eyes.
On the hospital bed, Wang Mo’s brain waves rise and fall strangely in sync with the trials he faces on the underworld road…
He battles his way through the underworld as those in the living world search for a solution. A birthday gift connects the two realms.
From Wild Dog Ridge on Jupiter to Ghost Village on Saturn, from the Terrace of Looking Homeward to the gates of Fengdu City, Wang Mo has only one thought:
“Mom, wait for me. I’ll bring your cardigan home.”
Even if the road ahead leads to the soul river of the Myriad Worlds, the judgment of countless beings, and the cosmic laws of life and death…
He will hold tight to that burning devotion to his mother.
