Forbidden Records from the Tomb

The Chen bloodline never lives past forty.

Chen Jiu was born with Yin Eyes, able to see things invisible to ordinary people. When he was five, he saw a ghost in white atop the old pagoda tree behind the mountain. When he was eighteen, his grandfather told him it was the curse of the Chen bloodline: none of them lived past forty.

To break the curse, he must gather the blood of the Four Symbols: Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise.

Starting at a blood coffin tomb in the Qinling Mountains, Chen Jiu sets foot on a road of no return. He is a tomb keeper, half human and half ghost, able to emerge for only one hour at a time, at a quarter past midnight on the fifteenth day of each month. To restore his body, he visits the Four Symbols families: a snake demon possessing someone in the Eastern House, the White Tiger guarding a tomb in the Western House, a battle of Taoist magic in the Nangong House, and a clash of sorcery in the Beigong House. Every drop of blood brings a life-or-death struggle.

And the mastermind behind it all is none other than the ruler of the Underworld.

Third Master Zhao says he is a traitor to the Underworld’s messengers. Lin Zhengying says he is the sinner who laid the curse. Chen Qingshan says he is a poor man who has guarded the tomb for forty years. As layer after layer of truth is revealed, Chen Jiu discovers that the curse on the Chen bloodline is not natural. Someone put it there.

Between the realms of yin and yang, who will rule?

The day he gathers all four kinds of blood will be the day the curse is broken. But what will it cost? Chen Jiu doesn’t know. He only knows that some roads must be taken, even when he knows they lead to death.

Because this is the fate of the Chen bloodline.

And it is his fate, too.