Rules-based horror descends, and the entire world is dragged into a battleground for national destiny. While other countries' chosen ones scream and flee through their scenarios, Chen Jin stands before the crematorium furnace at a funeral home, opening the Book of Deliverance his grandfather left behind.
He is the chief of the cremation department at Anning Funeral Home, and he moonlights handling “special remains.” While others awaken abilities through combat talents, healing auras, or elemental control, he relies on a family heirloom: a handwritten manual that can analyze rules, exploit them, and even rewrite them. It's a “rule-breaking instruction guide.”
On the night the first scenario began, a new coworker failed to whip a corpse thirteen times as required. The next day, his face had been sewn onto the furnace slag, facing the furnace as he knelt before it. Chen Jin picked up a willow branch without changing expression, dipped it in water from nowhere, and struck the moving corpse. Flames surged from the furnace, and the System bound itself to him. The first team scenario, “Western Hunan: The Corpse-Driving Inn,” officially began.
While other countries' chosen ones tremble in fear of the rules, Chen Jin uses the corpse-driving techniques in the Book of Deliverance to take control of the corpses in the inn. As supernatural corruption spreads into reality and countries struggle to resist with holy water and talismans, he drives a truck loaded with paper effigies and paper horses north along a narrow-gauge railway. From the old station at Nencheng to the Jietai siding, from the frozen waters of Lake Baikal to the Nordenskiold Arctic Station, he brings the funeral home's crematorium workers, a detective, a nurse, and university students, repairing every forgotten stretch of track and recording every nameless person's identity.
This book is neither officially compiled nor compiled by the people. It is compiled by a night watchman, for himself. All who read it may enter into a pact.
