For four hundred years, the Lu family has drawn talismans from one generation to the next: to guard homes, waters, corpses, and souls. Twelve talismans protected generation after generation. On the day they passed into Lu Daosheng's hands, his grandfather drew a thirteenth on his palm before breathing his last. It wasn't meant to suppress anything, but to mend a soul. When Lu was seven, something in the Huai River dragged his soul away. His grandfather cut off a piece of his own to mend it, and that fragment had curled up in Lu's palm for twenty years.
He thought it was a talisman. Only later did he learn it was a debt.
From that day on, things that had lain buried for centuries beneath the river began to rise. Someone on the Ying River was waiting for the character “Longing.” At the end of the bone steps in the Ru River, a fragmentary score lay guarded. On a stone stele in the Hui River, a woman had spent decades carving the character “Stillness” with her finger bones. Deep beneath the ice of the Beifei River, a river that still flowed lay sealed away. Each tributary held a talisman master of the Lu family. They had drawn themselves into talismans and sunk beneath the water, not to suppress evil, but to guard the gates for others.
And behind those gates lay the old debts everyone on both banks of the Huai River owed to the waters below.
Lu Daosheng took on four disciples and set out along ten tributaries with a worn-out brush, an old hammer, and a black cat, opening the gates one by one. There were no evil spirits behind them, only people who had waited for hundreds of years. They carved the names sunk beneath the river back onto bluestone slabs, pieced together the scraps of talismans that had drifted into the East Sea, and combed home one by one the strands of hair that had wound around the ferry posts and bound the ferryman women there.
After a lifetime spent drawing talismans to suppress things, what needed setting right was not the river, but the debts.
It is a ceiling-level fusion masterpiece of Chinese funeral folk customs and rules and ghost stories. It uses the unique and unpopular profession of a funeral parlor clerk as a cheat, breaking away from all the clichéd ways of fighting monsters and upgrading. The protagonist does not rely on brute force, but only relies on inheriting ancient laws, incineration to suppress evil, and dismantling weird rules to crush the whole process with high IQ. It is full of contrast and extremely consistent with folk logic. The hunt for corpses in Xiangxi, the national fortunes in forbidden areas, and the global dungeon game progress step by step. The horror atmosphere is exquisite and down to the bone. The setting of the niche funeral profession is novel and rare. It has a sense of family and country atmosphere, a sense of live broadcast excitement, and suspense foreshadowing. The rhythm is tight and the setting is reliable. The Chinese horror flavor is pure. The whole process is high-energy and has no peeing. It has good rules, ghost stories and folk suspense. It is a must-see hit masterpiece.
The novel cleverly combines suspense, adventure and philosophical thinking in its plot design. Each rune revealed brings with it a new mystery, pushing the story forward. At the same time, the author explores themes such as power, desire, sacrifice, and redemption through the connection between runes and the fate of the characters, making the work go beyond a simple fantasy narrative and have a deeper ideological connotation. I will finish reading it soon, I love it, and the author is working hard to update it! Nice
This is the first time I read a novel like this. It's very interesting and mysterious. It reminds me of my parents asking someone to write about the soul-gathering horse for their children when I was a child. The author's writing style is good and the writing is interesting. If you are interested, it's worth buying it. I give it a five-star rating and it's worth recommending!
The mysterious things in Xuanmen are intertwined with fate and cause and effect, and the talismans and Taoism hide mysteries. The writing is full of atmosphere, the plot is layered with twists and turns, the folklore and supernatural settings are novel and unique, the characters are vividly portrayed, thriller and suspense are intertwined, and you can immerse yourself in the unique charm of Chinese monsters.
This book "Thirteen Talismans" is so beautifully written, with smooth and natural writing style. It is simply a complete collection of Talisman knowledge. The plot has ups and downs and is exciting, really good!
The writing is smooth and natural, and the psychological description of the characters is very good. It is a rare good work. I really like to read it!
It's a very good supernatural article. I feel that the author is also very professional. I would like to ask if the author is in this field. 🤭🤭
It's a very interesting fantasy novel. It can be seen that the author has a deep research on Taoist talismans. The more I read, the more exciting it becomes.
A good novel, highly recommended.
The characters are very vivid and three-dimensional, and they look great. I was planning to go out to play, but I couldn't stop watching them. Highly recommended.