Lu Chen, a new hire at the Planning Bureau, wears a copper coin his father left him around his neck. On his first day at work, he feels a chill beneath his desk, a rank coldness creeping up from deep underground. After that come haunted houses, skeletons, underground caverns, dragon veins... Beneath this city lies a lifeline severed twenty years ago.
Zhao Dazhu, his college roommate from the bunk above, has come to Jiangzhou to work as a real estate agent. Qin Shaoqing is a wanderer with a copper ruler on his back. He always appears at critical moments, yet never says a word more than necessary.
Three men, three copper coins, three locks.
Someone is cutting into the city's dragon veins, and Lu Chen's father, Lu Tianxing, who vanished twenty years ago, seems to have left behind the only clue.
Lu Chen wants to know where his father went.
