The Corpse Retriever by the Yellow River
In 2000, college graduate Li Zhuiyuan returns to his hometown and is forced to inherit his great-grandfather's corpse-retrieval trade. When he hauls up the dried corpse of a Ming-dynasty “guardian,” he discovers that the Li family has been guarding a colossal feng shui seal stretching along the entire Yellow River since the time of Yu the Great: the Yu King's River-Subduing Formation. As the “River Sect,” long concealed in the shadows, begins destroying the formation's anchors one by one in an attempt to awaken the remnant soul of Gonggong, imprisoned beneath the river for thousands of years, Li Zhuiyuan joins forces with Maoshan successor Shen Qingci and Zhang Shouzheng, a river patrol envoy from Mount Longhu. Together, they journey upstream along the Yellow River. In the early twenty-first century, as Taoism falls into decline, they must defend the final barrier of the mother river with nothing but mortal bodies. Ancient feng shui, authentic Taoist traditions, the Yellow River's taboos, and the mournful song of an era intertwine in this paranormal mystery about protection and choice.
