Mystery Revival: The Balance Tower

My name is Lu Nian. Today, I forgot the name of my best friend. Tomorrow, I might forget who I am.

On the outskirts of Nandao City, in an abandoned school building, Lu Nian watched helplessly as an evil spirit drained his friend’s mind. A “bloodline” that fed on fear burrowed into his right hand. Old Zhao from the Gray Network told him, “You won’t last three months.”

There was no way back. The only way to fight ghosts was with ghosts.

He locked one evil spirit after another inside himself: the Blood Ghost devoured emotions, the Gravekeeper Ghost suppressed supernatural phenomena, and the “Bridge” kept them in balance. Every ghost he controlled demanded a price: his memories, emotions, sense of taste, and even his certainty about who he was.

Before the ghost mirror in Chenjiagou, he let the Gravekeeper Ghost pierce his left arm. In the Dachang laboratory, he embedded the “Bridge” in his chest. Three ghosts, three lives, one man.

But he wasn’t alone. Yang Jian emerged from the gray fog of the Knocking Ghost, the scarlet eye on his forehead barely open. “Being alive is a price in itself.” Fang Yan bled as she cut the rope for him. Gray Paper used his ruined right hand to shield him from a blade. Wei Jing used his broken body to buy him time.

Their enemy was a ghost known by the code name “K”: a mole at Old Qin’s side, and a descendant of the Chen family from the Republic era. K sought to replicate the Gravekeeper Ghost’s true form, seize the Ghost Messenger, and destroy humanity’s last line of defense.

From the thirty-six stone coffins at Tianyin Temple to the dusk when Old Qin fell in battle; from the blood and flames of the national war to the supernatural apocalypse, Lu Nian finally sealed his memory journal inside the tower’s foundation, gave up the last of his humanity, and became the unmoving stone statue at the top of the Balance Tower.

People called him the Ghost Emperor.

The tower bore the last words he had written before he forgot them: “My name is Lu Nian”