Before he died, my grandfather left me with one sentence: “The sixteen characters conceal a secret about me.” Then he passed away. While sorting through his belongings, I found half of The Sixteen-Character Feng Shui Secrets inside an ancient book. It recorded sixteen characters: Heaven, Earth, Human, Ghost, God, Buddha, Demon, Beast, Awe, Suppression, Escape, Object, Transformation, Yin, Yang, and Void. Each character was a gem of wisdom, seeming to hide the power to shake the balance of Yin and Yang.
I soon discovered that another half existed somewhere in the world. An unexpected turn of events left me with no choice but to set out in search of it. From the ghost caves of the Yellow River to the hanging coffins of the Qinling Mountains, from the Sea of Death in Lop Nur to Tianchi Lake in Changbai, I unraveled one feng shui mystery after another, while gradually uncovering the truth about my own origins.
It turned out that my grandfather’s secret was a game of chess that had been played for a thousand years. And I had long since become a pawn on its board, with no say in my own fate.
