In 1934, in western Hunan.
The Chen family is wiped out overnight, all thirty-two members buried in thirty-two flimsy coffins. The only one to escape is Chen Wangbei's son, Chen Jiu.
Four years later, Chen Jiu becomes a corpse-driving craftsman. In Black Bamboo Valley, he takes on a strange job transporting corpses. Among the seven bodies is an eighth "thing": a faceless corpse with a face sewn onto it. The creature tears open its own skin to reveal a sheet of yellow paper bearing a list written in Chen Wangbei's own hand, though the names have been altered.
Following the clues, Chen Jiu reaches the medicine estate of Bai Jingshan, the "Gu Master" of Yuanling. In an underground stone chamber, he discovers a woman who has been locked away for thirty-one years: Shen Ling, the last surviving member of the Shen family. Half a map of the dragon vein beneath Hanging Coffin Cliff is carved into her skin, while the other half is hidden in the Chen family's broken blade.
Bai Jingshan, Japanese spies, remnants of the former dynasty, and the guardians of the hanging coffins: four forces are all fighting over the same secret, the thing buried in the ancient tomb beneath Hanging Coffin Cliff. Some say it is the key to the former dynasty's dragon vein. Others say it is a wicked art capable of overturning yin and yang. Still others say it holds the power to make the dead walk and leave the living without graves. The broken blade is one of the keys to opening the tomb. To rescue his father, trapped inside a coffin made of darkwood, uncover the truth behind the massacre of the Chen family, and protect the last thread of dragon qi in western Hunan, Chen Jiu has no choice but to ally with a Miaojiang Gu sorceress, a family of corpse-driving craftsmen, and the guardians of the hanging coffins. Together, they carve a path through the cracks between warlords, the Japanese, and the remnants of the former dynasty. But when the broken blade is made whole and the hanging coffin cavern opens, Chen Jiu discovers that what lies buried in the tomb is neither treasure nor a dragon vein, but the final curse an emperor driven mad left to the world three hundred years ago.
