There’s more than just mud and sand beneath the Yellow River.
My name is Chen Shisan, the last corpse retriever on the banks of the Yellow River.
When I was twenty, my younger sister, Chen Nian, suddenly fell ill. Her body became covered in corpse spots, and she coughed up black blood. The doctor said she wouldn’t live three months, unless we found the coffin that should never have existed.
Three things must never be retrieved. That is the iron rule the Yellow River lays down for corpse retrievers: no living souls, no red-clad corpses, and no yin coffins.
But for my sister, I broke the taboo with my own hands.
The moment the yin coffin emerged from the water, I saw something that shouldn’t exist. The one lying inside was a life-borrowing vessel whose fate was bound to my sister’s.
It was all part of a scheme Lin Wanshan had been laying for ten years.
From the day my sister was born, she was chosen as a sacrifice. The ten-year life-borrowing curse drew on the life force of her closest kin to nourish the yin dragon beneath Suolong Village, a dragon that should never have awakened.
I traded half my life for ten more years for my sister.
The price was this: I became the Yellow River’s debt.
From then on, every time I set out to retrieve a corpse, I was cleaning up after Lin Wanshan. Every body that surfaced pointed to the same truth: Chen Nian wasn’t the only life he needed…
The Yellow River winds nine times; one life borrowed.
When the yin coffin opened again, I discovered that I had never been the one at the heart of the scheme.
